By Chris Lewis | May 20, 2021
The crosswalk concerns of Mount Pearl residents are being heard, says city council.
Councillor Isabelle Fry raised the issue at Tuesday’s meeting, including a report of a close call involving a young boy and an oncoming vehicle at a crosswalk on Park Avenue.
That particular incident had sparked a petition.
Deputy Mayor Jim Locke said while the danger at some crosswalks can certainly be partly attributed to faded road lines in the spring, the bulk of the responsibility falls on drivers and pedestrians alike, and their individual levels of awareness.
“We have to realize that everyone takes responsibility here for this,” Locke said, noting traffic has increased significantly since the Team Gushue Highway opened and filtered mor traffic through the city.
Locke said traffic and speeding have been major concerns every election he’s been involved in. What he would like to see, he added, is a strategy to deal with speed limits along the city’s roadways, something that has been discussed at the committee level from time to time. Locke referenced a book, Vision 0, which outlines strategies for reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero.
“All the research with show that at certain speeds, like 40-kilometres an hour, if there’s a collision with a pedestrian, the survival rate is considerably high for the pedestrian,” Locke explained. “But as soon as you go up to 50-kilometres an hour, then your chance of survival drops significantly.”
Locke said the roads in Mount Pearl were never designed with pedestrians in mind, instead making vehicular traffic a priority. Vision 0, he said, introduces a new way of thinking where right of way is shared with pedestrians.
“I just wanted to throw it out there to let residents know (the concerns) are not falling on deaf ears,” Locke said. “We still have to look at the speed limits in our city. When you reduce the speed, the fatalities from pedestrian collisions go way down.”
The City’s Municipal Enforcement Superintendent, Blair Tilley, said the city faces more pedestrian traffic related issues this time of year.
“The enforcement team is out on a regular basis,” he said, adding it is an offence under the province’s Highway Traffic Act to not yield to a pedestrian who is in the crosswalk. “Those things are very important and are taken very seriously by our team, as well as the RNC.”
Councillor Bill Antle agreed with Locke’s notions, allowing that when the City lowers speed limits, the problem will be fixed.
Antle said many of the calls he receives about the issue ask why speed bumps are not more common.
Mayor Dave Aker, too, said lower speed limits would at the very least reduce fatalities even if it is not an immediate cure-all. He reckoned such a change would require major investments, as well as increased enforcement.
Locke said the speed bump is often the basis of many calls for action from residents in any municipality when it comes to speed issues, but the research does not support their usefulness.
“If you’ve got people coming into your municipality who is unfamiliar with where a speed bump is, that could also result in an accident,” Locke said. “They can contribute to accidents, so there’s issues with speed bumps. They are not the panacea cure-all. They may work in some areas, but I would not support putting them on, for example, Commonwealth Avenue. That would be like putting them on the Outer Ring Road to try to slow people down. The science says there are measures out there to manage traffic effectively. Part of that is the speed… There’s no reason - in my opinion - why any residential street should have a speed of 40 or 50 kilometres an hour. There’s no reason why anyone should be going 40 while coming up my street in Mount Pearl to get out onto Smallwood Drive Extension … I want residents to know we’re not ignoring this. It’s a complex issue that requires investigation.”
Locke recommended discussing lower speed limits at the committee level, though there was no motion to do that.
Fry, however, suggested she might support that plan.
“The reality is, if you have a speed limit of 40, people are going to go 50. If you have a speed limit of 50, people are going to go 60. So, I absolutely support reducing the speed limit,” she said.
