Road safety includes hot spots, sidewalks, and street lights

The lengthy consideration of how to address safety on Grey Highlands roads by council last week included mention of sites where there have been injuries, and also the need for a uniform approach to requests from people for speed to be reduced on their road.

HOT SPOTS

Coun. Paul Allen pointed out long sections in the report dealing with Eugenia and Markdale, where there have been pedestrian deaths.

He said with accidents, four seconds can make the difference on whether there’s a collision or not and questioned how it’s decided where attention is needed.

Ms Milliner said that the consultant will set the criteria for where measures need to be taken within the policies.

“The policies need to match and can’t contradict,” she said, and that enable staff to share those policies with a resident when they call.

Coun. Allwood said that the policy would allow the municipality to be consistent and have a basis for what actions are taken on roads.

His remark started out by saying it was important because of liability. But it quickly went further than that.

The Chamber member spoke about the Markdale Hwy. 10 and Main Street (Grey Rd. 12) intersection where a former Chamber manager was struck and died.

“I drive through Markdale every day. I drive through that intersection very carefully.”

He said the township wants to avoid litigation but more than that wants to avoid personal injury accidents happening to our pedestrians and people who use roads.

He said he sees pedestrians at that intersection, and not all are paying attention to what’s around them. “They’re on their phones, they’re wearing headphones – they just assume they have the right-of-way.”

He also observed that natural hazards are involved – such as the sun shining right into the eyes of those heading west into the Markdale intersection.

He said reducing speeds are not the whole answer for pedestrian survival of crashes. “You can just get knocked down, bump your head on the sidewalk and have a tragic end.”

Coun. Nadia Dubyk said the pedestrian safety report highlights public input, which she said Grey Highlands is getting through its road safety committee, emails and people coming to council meetings.

Right now, she said, council has sometimes gone from input to action with a “light touch” on evaluation. Having policies is key to clear decisions according to a framework to properly assess concerns.

Coun. Dan Wickens commented that “as much as I dislike consultants and the prices that we pay for them”, he agreed that the matters discussed need to be considered. Hearing that the transportation department is at its limit, he said he “begrudgingly” agreed with getting the policies formulated by a third party.

Coun. Joel Loughead said he supports having policy created with complaints, actions, and possible decisions. Two days earlier, he said he was in a road safety discussion about movable speed bumps, but no one on committee is an expert.

Coun. Dubyk wanted to make sure that as items come forward while waiting for policies come back, that measures like speed reducing features can be included.

“How we can apply our vision that isn’t yet penned in our policies to date?”, she wondered. “Things are moving so quickly in the municipality… Our policies are lagging.”

SPEED LIMITS

Council endorsed having a speed limit policy included in the consultant’s mandate.

“We’ve been doing everything piecemeal to date,” Coun. Dubyk said. She observed that many places in Toronto have lowered speeds to 30 km/hr in neighbourhoods.

The policy could look at rural and urban roads, and different types of roads within settlement areas, Mr. Cornfield said.

He explained that it was a complex question – right now roads in the country are assumed 80 km/hr unless posted and in towns 50.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean the road has been constructed and engineered to that speed,” he said. “Those are some of the questions that need to be answered.”

There can be different things affecting a person’s observations of speed, he said. Larger vehicles are always perceived of moving faster than they are.

When it comes to speed limits and there are many larger vehicles on a route, their longer stopping distance needs to be considered, too, he said.

Grey Highlands staff will develop a community safety zone policy. Coun. Loughead said he agreed with creating the policy for the zones. But signs for safety zones, like those for lower speed limits won’t make anyone safer without enforcement, he said.

He emphasized the need to look into automated speed enforcement in those zones. Grey Highlands has heard that the county is preparing a report on that.

Two new electronic signs that show drivers their speed will be rotated through about 15 identified trouble spots, council decided. The signs were already approved and purchased at about $10,000, and also can capture speed and volume. Council asked for information collected to be reported to council.

M.T. Fernandes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Flesherton Advance