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Manitoba premier presses brakes on city request for new default speed limit in Winnipeg (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 week ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to c/winnipeg@lemmy.ca

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[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"If the province doesn't want to deal with it, then basically what we go back to is building up our streets with blobs of asphalt, putting speed tables [raised sections] in, putting concrete bulb-outs — cluttering up the streets like that and changing the built environment — so people will slow down."

Quote from Janice Lukes. I think this is actually a good idea. We can’t design our streets like racetracks and expect changing the speed limit to slow people down. I’m sure changing the speed limit would work to an extent, but a lot of people literally just don’t follow speed limits at all in the first place. What we need, first, are narrower streets that will naturally slow people down. A good bonus here is that those streets will cost less to build and maintain, since narrower streets need less asphalt, and asphalt is expensive.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There have been some pilot projects with reduced speed zones in place for a couple of years now in certain neighbourhoods, but I don't think I've seen any data on the outcomes. I guess it tracks that they must be satisfied with them, for them to want to make the change citywide.

I haven't encountered too many of the "clutter" zones, but when I have, they have certainly done their jobs.

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I guess it tracks that they must be satisfied with them, for them to want to make the change citywide

Yeah. Especially since the current council has been dragging their feet on other urbanist priorities (like the Wellington Crescent bike lane, which has recently been delayed yet again). And I think these speed reductions are actually pretty popular. People generally don’t like cars speeding down their residential streets.

There’s an interesting blog post on this issue from the Dear Winnipeg blog, if anyone is interested. Fun fact: the guy who wrote this is married to Emma Durand-Wood, the most recent member of council who was elected for Elmwood East-Kildonan in a by-election, only a few months ago. This was one of the issues she campaigned on. So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that speed reductions on residential streets has become an issue shortly after she was elected.