By Jocelyn Dickey
Centretown is a maze of one-way streets and speed humps designed to make the area safer, but not all residents think they’re needed.
A group of residents living in the Rochester and Willow streets area, close to Somerset and Booth streets, thinks the traffic-calming measures taken in their area haven’t made it safer. They say they want more studies done before any further changes are made to steets in the area.
Peter Harris, a Willow Street resident, is upset about what he perceives to be a waste of tax payers’ money. He organized a small demonstration on April 4, to prove the measures, like narrowing roads and putting obstructions in intersections, do not work — at least not how they are supposed to.
As part of Ottawa’s traffic-calming scheme, Rochester Street has been narrowed. At Willow Street, the curbs curve out into the intersection at the corners, eliminating one lane’s worth of space. Sidewalks on both sides of the street have also been widened.
These measures are all designed to slow traffic. But residents say the traffic moves just as fast as ever, and cheaper alternatives, like the installation of four-way stop signs, would work better.
Somerset city Coun. Elisabeth Arnold disagrees. “The committee says stop signs have proven ineffective,” she says.
“We couldn’t do anything at the time to stop (the city) from doing this,” says Tony D’Angelo, who owns a construction business on Rochester. “They made a mess, they’re blocking the streets.”
“People try and turn corners and they can’t make it,” says Mathew D’Aquino, who’s father owns a paint store on Rochester Street. “I’ve seen fire trucks have to go around onto Booth to get to a fire that’s only a block away.”
Because of the narrowed intersection, the fire truck couldn’t make a tight enough turn to go around the corner, he says.
In spite of traffic calming, Rochester Street is still the site of traffic accidents. Harris says there was an accident at the Willow Street intersection recently.
“I’ve asked our city to replace (these traffic-calming measures) with stop signs and to stop spending our money on them until they find out whether or not they work,” he says. “At least use Rochester Street as a good case study, go to the residents find out (if) it works. Living here I can tell you these do not work.”
Another proponent of stop signs is Ante Strmota, a Rochester Street property owner. “A few hundred dollars (for new stops signs) is not a big deal compared to a few thousand (for traffic calming),” he says.
Arnold says all traffic-calming measures are studied and approved by city engineers before being implemented.
At a meeting April 5, city council unanimously approved another round of traffic calming to be implemented this coming year.
“I feel confident the traffic-calming measures have been approved because the engineers say they work,” Arnold says.
Area residents attending the protest agreed there weren’t any traffic problems before the city brought in the traffic-calming measures.
Harris says the only conceivable problem which may have caused the city to introduce traffic calming was speed since Rochester Street comes off the Queensway. But, he says, the traffic-calming measures haven’t done much to make drivers slow down.
D’Aquino, Harris, Strmota and D’Angelo say they’ve tried to voice their opinions to city council but have been ignored. They say they hope the protest on April 4 will have made their opinions heard.
But Arnold says people such as Harris are the minority.
“Traffic calming is something we’ve had extensive public consultation about, and the majority of people have been in favour of it,” she says.