New round of temporary traffic-calming curbs popping up

The city is expanding a pilot project aimed at slowing drivers down by narrowing the lanes.

The city is expanding a pilot project aimed at slowing drivers down by narrowing the lanes. Last year the city installed temporary traffic calming measures at select locations. This summer, nine more intersections will receive the devices, which can be placed tight to the curb or directly in the middle of the street.

The new locations include Jefferson Avenue and Roberts Crescent, Flora Avenue and King Street, Main Street and Dufferin Avenue, and Talbot Avenue and Elmwood Road. Also on the list are Cumberland Avenue and Edmonton Street, River Avenue near Arctic Street, Westminster Avenue and Ethelbert Street, John Forsyth Road and the South St. Vital Trail, and Southglen Boulevard and Hirt Crescent. The city says the curb cuts, as they are known, are placed near schools and crosswalks where speeding and collisions are a problem.

They are also installed at intersections with wide corners and at crosswalks with poor visibility. According to the city, speeds dropped by 10 per cent on average at last year’s installation sites. Reaction to the added locations has been mixed.

Some residents welcome the change, including one driver near the new installation on Southglen, which sits in the middle of the street near a crosswalk and a school. “I think it’s phenomenal,” the driver said. “I walk down here with my kids all the time going to the playground, no one stops at this crosswalk, so it’s just not enough.”

Other drivers, along with a number of people online, worry the new measures may be hazardous. “All of a sudden it’s there, and then there’s people coming the other way too, so I think it’s an accident waiting to happen,” said another driver. Public works committee chair Janice Lukes says that where the curb cuts are found not to be working, the city will consider alternatives such as speed humps.

She says where they are proving effective at slowing traffic, permanent measures will be built in when the road is renewed. “This is what the city is doing, these pilots, to see what works and what doesn’t, before we permanently build it in,” Lukes said. After the first year, the city says it received fewer than 10 complaints about the temporary curbs, with a third of the calls from residents requesting them.