Raise the Hammer

I live on a street south of Main that is entirely residential except where it meets more major streets. As a direct result of all five of Main’s lanes traveling eastbound, we see significant westbound rat running. And the motorists who do this treat our street about as they would treat Main: they go as fast as they possibly can, which is pretty darned fast. I don't think the situation is nearly as bad as on Charlton/Herkimer, but it's not good.

It is worst on Charlton and Herkimer, but other streets in Durand and Kirkendall are pretty bad, too, from what I can see. This through-traffic should not be on these residential streets since we have an effective grid of arterials…except we don’t. If a motorist wants to go westbound, it’s a kilometre from Charlton to King. I understand why someone would just take Charlton all the way from the access instead: to a motorist, it probably looks like a through street, and there’s only a few areas with token traffic calming. Same with Hunter: if you’re downtown, there’s not that many impediments between James and Dundurn to going as fast as you want, even though that’s by and large a residential street. Since Main is not an option, Hunter probably seems pretty sensible. The obvious solution is to let vehicles take Main either direction, and make streets that are not arterials less hospitable to through-traffic. I’m not optimistic about either happening.

I don’t trust myself to accurately gauge the speeds at which cars travel, but I can say that it’s a common occurrence on my purely residential street to see vehicles traveling at speeds that would give them no chance to stop for a child chasing a ball, and of course that generate a tonne of noise. 90km/h at 3:00pm on a Monday next to a park should be a real eye-opener. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how that behaviour will eventually end in tragedy. Even after that happens, I will remain unoptimistic that anything will be done about it.