City considers test of reduced-speed neighbourhoods

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/09/2021 (1481 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG has 30 km/h zones and streets, but that reduced speed could soon apply to entire neighbourhoods.

City bureaucrats have recommended some communities switch to the lower speed limit in a new pilot project.

Council had directed city staff to look into making 15 roads — one in each ward — 30 km/h zones. A new report from the public service suggests implementing the change in entire neighbourhoods instead.

“With 30-kilometre zones surrounded by 50-kilometre zones or even higher speeds… (drivers) will avoid those streets and go to other streets that might not have been designed for that level of traffic,” said Coun. Matt Allard, council’s public works chairman.

That’s one of the reasons the change has been suggested, he said.

“With a neighbourhood-based approach, you wouldn’t get that problem because everyone in the neighbourhood would be going (30 km/h).”

Allard believed four neighbourhoods would be affected, but city staff hadn’t named specific communities.

A downside to the proposed change is the amount of signage, Allard said.

“If you wanted to reduce the speed from the default 50, you’d have to put up a sign at every block,” he said. “That’s quite costly.”

Council has asked the province to approve boundary signage, where speed limit signs would be erected at community entry points instead of on each street, but there has been no response, Allard said.

The city turned four neighbourhood greenways into 30 km/h zones as part of its pilot project in July. Machray Avenue, Powers Street, Eugenie Street and Warsaw Avenue are affected.

The city’s public works committee will debate the issue on Wednesday.

Coun. Shawn Nason (Transcona) wants to see a citywide approach or nothing at all.

“I think we’re making streets less safe, because people are going to be trying to figure out, ‘Am I in a 30 zone? Forty zone?’” he said.

Fifty-kilometre zones are unsafe on roads with no sidewalk, he noted.

“We need to work with the province and determine if this is going to be a citywide mandate,” he said. “These block pilots that (have) been proposed are just a slippery way to try to mandate it in… without proper education and training.”

Todd Dube, leader of traffic advocacy group Wise Up Winnipeg, said the slower speed areas aren’t “necessary or effective.”

“The rhetoric of ‘slow down and save the kids’ really is simply the front line of what becomes an abusive enforcement revenue program, as we’ve seen in the City of Winnipeg for decades,” Dube said.

City staff has also suggested erecting speed-reader boards at the 10 photo-enforced locations that have the highest number of infractions.

The boards show motorists’ speeds on an LED screen. The city is borrowing four boards from Manitoba Public Insurance for three years and will install them this fall.

Grant Avenue, west of Thurso Street, topped the list for number of infractions in 2020, with 11,654 tickets. Eastbound Talbot Avenue, near Watt Street, was second with 4,816 tickets issued.

“Speed boards are extremely effective,” Dube said.

Each one costs about $5,000, plus $1,000 in annual maintenance and operating fees, the city report says. Installation adds another $1,300 to $10,000, depending on the post used and placement.

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca