Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

But I do think this is an important policy. We need to use every tool at our disposal. Lower speed limits isn't a complete solution in and of itself, but it is a component of every other solution. You cannot use ASE to enforce a lower speed than the limit, our engineers refuse to design a road for a lower speed than the limit, police refuse to call "speed" a factor in a collision where the driver was travelling even remotely close to the limit at the time of impact.

Of course you can’t and they refuse. By definition, it’s not illegal to drive under the speed limit, and it’s obviously insane to have a road designed to be unsafe at the posted limit (just as insane as having the normal road design be unsafe for non-drivers).

That being said, the fix would be to lower the limit in many cases, re-design the street for the new limit, and enforce the new limit, including with automated techniques.

I also think it's a policy that's easy to support. Yes...tons of people make often bad faith, always selfish arguments against it, but most people, and especially most people who have the most political sway (you know, own houses) live in residential areas and don't like people speeding past their homes. It's a policy which wealthy drivers can see themselves benefiting from. I am, frankly, surprised, and disappointed that Waterloo reversed their decision on the 30km/h limit. It makes no sense, these people made that decision, but they didn't seem to run on that as a platform, and I think it should have been subject to the usual 60% bar on reversing a previous council's decision.

I’m pretty sure the 60% bar is on reversing the same council’s decision. City government is allowed to change previous policies, just not keep flip-flopping during a single council term depending on who is away that day.

Well this simply isn't true.

Speed limits are upper limits, despite how they are treated. There are many cases where it is unsafe to travel at the posted limit. Obviously in bad weather, but also if your vehicle is less capable, for example, because you have an emergency tire.

You can argue that those are contextual issues that lower the safe speed, but even road design is often unable to be made safe at the legal speed limit. Bends in major roads are one example. The top local example being Weber St. Now you may point out that the bend has a "lower speed limit" but it doesn't, it has a yellow advisory sign recommending a lower speed, but it is not a legal requirement. As far as the law is concerned, you can travel at the speed limit given on the previous white regulatory sign and you cannot be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit.

But even leaving that aside, there are still roads which do not meet the design speed of 50km/h, and do not have a lower speed limit.

For example, here is an alley near Downtown Kitchener: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4571863,...312!8i6656

It is a legal public road in the city. It has no signed limit, which means the default limit of 50km/h applies here.

It is clear to everyone that driving down this road at 50km/h would be extremely unsafe.

Engineers build these roads all the time. Yet they will argue with a straight face that that they cannot design YOUR street with a design speed less than 60km/h because it would be unsafe.

As usual, the engineering profession just makes shit up, they're full of bullshit.

There is no reason they couldn't design a road for a lower speed, they do it all the time. They can, they simply refuse to, because they have drank their own koolaid...they believe they are practising engineering, not divination, but they're wrong.

And yes, I'm reading Walkable Cities by Jeff Speck...he pulls no punches when speaking about engineers.

As for the 60% requirement....that's possible, I'm not the council clerk so I'm not exactly expected to know these specifics...but it really pisses me off that they reversed the decision. That being said, I don't think it's actually true that it would be required but only because of a bullshit bureaucratic technicality. They voted on the "implementation" of the policy, in the first instance they directed staff the develop the implementation plan. Two different things, technically they can reverse. Of course, that never happens when it comes to building or widening roads.

FWIW...I'm frustrating it's taking this long. The City of Waterloo is going to have taken MORE time to lower the speed limits in the city than it took Seoul Korea to demolish an entire raised freeway. Bureaucracy like this is \a tool to enforce the establishment. This should have been doable in like 2-3 months, maybe for the whole city rollout, a year. Instead it's going to be 2-3 years at least. We saw the same thing with the Region's "rapid protected bike lane pilot" which took longer to do than it was supposed to last.