Comment 64207

By adrian (registered) | Posted May 30, 2011 at 09:17:35 in reply to Comment 64194

The whole Cootes drive reduced speed and pedestrian crosswalk is a fine example. Just a giant speed trap.

You've got to be kidding me. It took a pedestrian dying on Cootes to get them to lower the speed limit there. From the Dundas Star:

A 2004 study of Cootes Drive safety by Synectics Transportation Consultants found 85 per cent of drivers travelled up to 100 km-h in the posted 80 km-h zone.

Subsequent studies show lowering the posted limit to 60 and 40 km-h had no effect on that rate of speed.

Synectics found the excessive speeding and high volume of pedestrians and cyclists "create a potentially hazardous situation."

The study recommended a pedestrian-controlled crossing of Cootes Drive, at Sanders Boulevard, lane narrowing, other changes to the roadside to decrease speeding and increased police enforcement.

Originally, the city only adopted the recommended pedestrian-controlled crossing and none of the other suggestions were acted on.

Just a few months after the pedestrian crossing started operating, a McMaster student was struck and killed by a truck in the crosswalk.

The city lowered the speed limit around the crosswalk to 40 km-h and dropped the approaching limit from 80 to 60 km-h, without following any of the other recommendations from the Synectics study.

Are you seriously suggesting that the city should not have installed a pedestrian crosswalk on a road where people are travellng at 100 km/h, right next to a university, past a residential neighbourhood, where people have been killed trying to cross the street?

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