City seeks ‘vision zero’ project expansion

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This article was published 17/05/2023 (1222 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Brandon’s pilot project to reduce speed limits in certain neighbourhoods could eventually lead to a new permanent speed reduction across the whole city.

Brandon City Council heard a presentation Monday night on city administration’s next efforts to implement a “vision zero” traffic design philosophy.

Under vision zero, jurisdictions design roadways to try to eliminate deaths and serious injuries caused by traffic.

After first lowering the speed limit on Durum Drive in southwest Brandon to 40 kilometres an hour last year and extending that pilot project again this year, the city is preparing to lower the speed limits in the Parkdale and Riverheights neighbourhoods as well as on the streets surrounding Rideau Park and on Princess Avenue East.

Roads along the boundaries of those neighbourhoods will remain at 50 km/h.

The two neighbourhoods will have their speed limits reduced effective June 1, while the Rideau Park and Princess Avenue reductions will begin July 1.

Speaking to the Sun ahead of the council meeting, traffic and transportation planner Sam van Huizen explained why those neighbourhoods were added to the pilot project.

“Parkdale seemed like a good fit because the residents were already exposed through that neighbourhood,” van Huizen said, referring to the Durum Drive pilot. “It has a limited number of entrance and exit points to the arterial network, so that limited the cost for signage and advertisements.”

Riverheights was chosen because of physical similarities in terms of restricted entrances and exits, but also because the city wanted to conduct a test in a neighbourhood outside of southwest Brandon.

Van Huizen told council 34th Street and Victoria Avenue will not be included in the speed limit reduction at this time.

Regarding the Princess Avenue East speed reduction, he told council that street sees elevated traffic because it is relatively straight and uninterrupted.

“This style of collector is a residential area and is prone to seeing elevated speeds beyond the default speed limit,” he said. “The segment will be monitored for compliance with signage initially only. The city may install traffic calming measures to help with the compliance if there are no observed changes in driver compliance with the new speed limit.”

Those neighbourhoods weren’t chosen necessarily because of complaints from residents, van Huizen said. All neighbourhoods generate complaints about speeding, which the planner said substantiates a reduced speed limit in the city.

From doing research into vision zero, van Huizen said the city has learned that every speed reduction of 10 kilometres an hour leads to an exponential reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

“In an ideal world, you’d have everybody going 20 or 30 kilometres an hour,” he said. “At the same time, you need to balance good and efficient movement within the city street network. We’re kind of figuring that 40 kilometres an hour gives a reduction but is not too much of a reduction where it halts the flow of traffic and creates congestion where we’re otherwise trying to prevent so.”

The limit decrease at Rideau Park to 30 km/h was decided on because it’s a major destination for residents and visitors to the city accessing amenities like the spray park and paddle pool in the summer and sledding in the winter.

Essentially, the 300 and 400 blocks of Park Street, the 400 and 500 blocks of Lorne Avenue East and the 300 block of Franklin Street will be treated like a school zone that will be in effect all the time.

In the engineering community, van Huizen said there’s a sense that things such as playgrounds and parks should be treated the same for traffic planning purposes as schools because they see a lot of potentially vulnerable roads users accessing them by foot.

If the reduction around Rideau Park proves effective, similar reductions could be added to other parks and playgrounds in the city.

Nothing is set in stone at this point, but van Huizen said more speed reductions could still be implemented this year should the city believe they are warranted.

“We don’t want to go too far. It’s still just a pilot project, but ultimately the goal of the pilot is to create a database of recommendations for the vision zero task force for the default speed limit in the city of Brandon on local streets, collector streets, arterial streets as well as near high concentrations of vulnerable users like at schools and playgrounds.”

To this point, van Huizen said the city has seen compliance with the reduced speed on some parts of Durum Drive. For the areas where motorists aren’t obeying the lower speed as well, the city will use data collected to see what other traffic-calming measures can be implemented.

After purchasing mobile trailers with speed boards last year, van Huizen said they will be deployed across the city this year including to the areas with reduced speed limits to help remind motorists about the legal speed and collect traffic data.

The new pilot projects will be in place for at least a year to help collect traffic data from different times and seasons.

Should any residents — pedestrians, cyclists or drivers — want to provide feedback on the city’s vision zero pilot projects or suggest parts of town they should be expanded into, van Huizen said they can contact him by phone at 204-729-2105 or by email at s.vanhuizen@brandon.ca.

The city also plans on putting up information on social media and through mailouts to areas affected by the speed changes. A public engagement survey can be found online at bit.ly/3pOZFGc.

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