By Meagan Kelly
A Lisgar Street resident is asking the city to revise its policies for deciding where speed humps go after his neighbourhood fought the city to put the brakes on one for their street.
Allan Spencer says the city needs to update the Centretown Traffic Calming Plan created in 1997.
The plan outlines a long list of projects, including speed humps, to help reduce speeding on congested residential streets.
Under this plan, the city proposed a speed hump on Lisgar Street between Percy Street and Bay Street. When it notified residents in June of the project, Spencer and 26 others signed a petition saying they did not want the hump because it would be a nuisance.
In September, the city decided to scrap the project.
“I am pleased they decided not to put [speed humps] on there,” says Spencer.
“But I wasn’t pleased that they didn’t ask the people who currently live here . . . Sticking a flyer in somebody’s mailbox . . . that’s not asking the community.”
What neighbourhoods said they wanted during the public consultation for the plan in the ‘90s is not necessarily what they want now, Spencer says.
But Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes, who helped to change the city staff’s mind about the speed hump on Lisgar Street, says the city is doing the best it can working with current residents about the plan.
“We certainly want to know what recent feelings are on the street,” says Holmes. “If the street doesn’t want it, then it’s not needed.”
Spencer says his block doesn’t think speeding is a problem because there is already a stop sign to slow traffic on the one–way street.
He says there have been few, if any, accidents on the street, so putting a speed hump in would make things worse, creating pollution and noise as drivers stop and start.
“I was just through the roof,” says Spencer. “It’s the only street in downtown that isn’t annoying and they [were] gonna screw this street up,” says Spencer.
He says he doubts he is the only one who feels this way.
“What? Do our three blocks have super anti-speed bump people? . . . But apparently all the other blocks are happy happy happy, but really nobody bothered to ask them directly is what it comes down to.”
But one resident of Lewis Street, which got a speed hump last week, says the traffic calming plan does reflect what communties want.
Jerry Ritt was able to convince the city to put a speed hump on Lewis Street earlier than planned.
“[Drivers] just want to rush in order to get to the Queensway or Wellington Street,” says Ritt. “This is our home . . . speed humps are really efficient, and they are relatively inexpensive and they really have an effect.”
According to Bob Streicher, acting manager of the city’s Area Traffic Management department, there has been a decline in accidents on streets with speed humps since the plan’s implementation nine years ago.
He says humps are one of the cheapest traffic calming measures at $2,000 to $3,000 a piece and says there are low maintenance costs.
“It’s fairly clear [their cost] can be justified. One vehicle collision can be dramatically more than that. If one person is injured, if you can reduce that by even one that’s quite dramatic.”
Streicher says there are about 50 speed humps currently in Centretown.
Based on his cost estimates per hump, that is a total cost of about $100,000.
Spencer says this is “a terrible waste of money.”
“Every budget time there’s not enough money for police and social programs, yet they can come along and put in what drivers consider to be a nuisance,” he says.
But since the city is spending taxpayers money, Spencer says, it needs to go back and update the plan to reflect what each neighbourhood needs.
Streicher says he understands the desire to change the plan, but the city does not have the resources to conduct a massive community consultation project.
He says notifying residents and giving them one last opportunity to voice their concerns will have to do.
“We’re caught in a difficult situation and all we can do is trying and work though this as best we can,” says Streicher.
“Some of these communities have invested some substantial amount of time in getting these measures approved [in 1997]. It’s probably not fair for us to start questioning that at this point.”
The plan still has $7 million worth of traffic calming projects left, some of which are speed humps.