The death of a 27-year-old cyclist last month aimed the spotlight at safety on Bronson Avenue, but the city needs to do more than just review speed limits to prevent another tragedy on one of the capital’s busiest roads.
Whether or not speed was a factor in the death of Krista Johnson is murky, as she was biking north in the southbound lane when she was struck on Oct. 18.
But her death reopened the discussion about the ongoing traffic and safety issues on Bronson Avenue, which make it a dangerous area for residents of Centretown, the Glebe and Old Ottawa South.
“The tragedy starts a different kind of conversation,” says Rob Dekker, spokesman for the Centretown Citizens Community Association. “It changes the urgency. Now we have to make sure we change faster, make sure the right parameters are in place to prevent any further death or injury along that street.”
In the wake of the tragedy Coun. David Chernushenko proposed a reduction in the speed limit on the stretch of road near Holmwood Avenue where Johnson was hit. In early November, the city launched a safety review of the entire street. But it will take more than a reduction in speed to make Bronson safe for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians—Bronson Avenue needs a fundamental redesign.
The street is one of the most heavily used thoroughfares in Ottawa, an arterial route that is one of the few north-south corridors for drivers coming from outside of downtown. The speed limit for much of Bronson Avenue is 70 km/h, though it drops to 60 km/h for the stretch just north of Carleton University.
But the limits are routinely ignored, with speeds above 80 km/h distressingly common, as city staff reported at a meeting of the transportation committee on Nov. 7. At that same meeting, Coun. David Chernushenko proposed a 10 km/h reduction for the area of Bronson north of Carleton. Although his efforts are admirable, the current speed limit isn’t being respected even with the threat of financial loss—a few more tickets, even dozens more, won’t change the way people move.
For more evidence, look to King Edward Avenue. After the completion of a six-year reconstruction project that began in 2005, the six-lane outlet from the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge is a wide-open paradise for speed demons.
Despite a posted speed limit of 40 km/h, local safety advocates on the King Edward Task Force have measured cars, trucks, and buses reaching regular speeds of 70 km/h. The heavy heads of coffee-starved commuters turn into heavy feet on their daily
commutes to and from work.
Like King Edward, it’s the design of Bronson itself that’s the issue. Only physical changes will have any effect on the way traffic flows.
The six-lane section south of Carleton is not the problem, but as the road narrows to four lanes north of the Rideau Canal, traffic begins to pack together.
Despite the close quarters, speed barely drops as cars plow through to Carling Avenue and beyond. Pedestrians and cyclists have little room to maneuver, and it’s only a matter of time until the next collision.
Dekker says King Edward and Bronson were designed before city engineers had an understanding of the way people move in the 21st century.
“They’re not designed for safety, they’re designed to move as many cars as they can,” he says. “That might have been okay 20 years ago before we had the types of pedestrian and bicycle traffic that we have. Our modes of transportation are changing rapidly and we need to make sure everyone can travel safe.”
You have to move people, that’s a fact,” he says. “But if you do it a little slower by design, you can get away with a narrower road. If you have traffic speeds of 70, 80, even 90 km/h like we’ve seen, you can’t have cyclists. It’s like cycling on the Queensway, you’ve had to be crazy.”
Narrowing the road and putting in a segregated lane for cyclists would go a long way towards reducing speeds on Bronson Avenue.
Shrinking the road from four lanes to two in each direction would force speeders to slow down and merge, but putting the brakes on speeding would snarl traffic on an already packed road.
Traffic jams on Bronson Avenue, however, are a small price to pay if lives can be saved. And traffic jams might also encourage more people to use alternate methods of travel such as cycling, especially when mounted riders whizz by during a Friday afternoon slowdown.
Speed kills, but speed limits don’t save lives. To prevent another tragedy, we have to rebuild Bronson Avenue.