Here’s a little weekend reading for you. I thought given the intense desire on the part of many councillors for this report, they would have it up on their sites as well (hint hint 🙂 )
Over the course of the last municipal campaign and in fact over the past several years people have asked what we can do to stop speeding and make our streets safer. Million dollar question.
Do we put more police on the streets for enforcement purposes? Are speed bumps the answer? How can we narrow a road like Scott (Expressway as its been called) Blvd to get people to slow down, especially in school zones?
Town staff has returned a report that will be tabled at the Community Services Standing Committee this coming Monday night at Town Hall. I haven’t had the time to review it myself in detail (thats my homework for this weekend!) and I wanted to provide the link for you to download and read the report.
Here is the link to the agendafor Mondays meeting. There will also be a number of quarterly reports for 2010 from a number of departments including the Fire Department, Community Services, and Engineering Services as well. Other consent items include the Nassagaweya Tennis Club lease agreement, Milton Farmers Market agreement, and other staff reports on implementing all way stops at some intersections (Mowatt & Coates – Scott Blvd & Pringle). There will also be some presentations on the towns “Move More Milton” program and the concept design of Milton’s Fire Hall #3.
Here is the link to the traffic calming report from Town of Milton staff.
Residents are invited to speak to the committee by letting the town clerk know before 10AM on Monday and stand as a delegation. That means YOU have homework too!
Feel free to comment here or send me an email to mike@mikecluett.ca with your comments that I can direct to the committee on your behalf if you cant make it Monday. Of course you can also follow along at home by watching the meeting online (sounds nice to say that finally) I’ll put the link off to the right hand side for easy reference.
Getting back to the traffic calming ideas, the easiest solution to making our streets safer for drivers and pedestrians alike is for people to drive with care and abide by the speed limits, avoid illegal passing on streets, and to take more caution when driving. Most drivers do these things, but its the few that cause issues and concerns with Milton residents.
Will all of these solutions be perfect for Milton? Likely not. Each area in question will have to be assessed separately and not just cookie cutter solutions for all. As the report outlines, there are costs involved in each of these measures and will require extensive training of drivers in town to get used to them once/if they are implemented.
So take some time to review the report, submit your questions or concerns to me, or your councillor if you like, and watch the meeting on Monday night starting at 7pm.
I’ll see you at the meeting.
In case you missed the last council meeting, its now available on demand from the Town of Milton website.
Monday February 28th, 2011 Milton Council Meeting
Hi Mike,
I wrote to you regarding the speeding on Meighen Way a while back, and I was happy to see discussion on this issue on the town agenda.
I think if possible, consideration should be made on ensuring the aesthetic beauty of the town such as Fig 8 on Pg 18, where the median had greenery and trees to minimize the concrete median.
Also, using the petition to start a traffic calming investigation should not be the only avenue of traffic calming.
I recommend that certain roads with parks (such as Meighen Way) should have traffic calming measures regardless, due to the fact that there will be a proportionately higher number of children and pedestrians crossing these roads which could lead to higher probabilities of traffic accidents.
Meighen Way is especially in need of traffic calming due to the high number of children crossing the road to get to the park, combined with the rush of traffic caused by cars using the road to drop off and pick up students at Hawthorne Village Public School.
Finally, I think physical on-the-road obstacles will yield better results than police monitoring and signage as people who are speeding and more likely to cause an accident won’t be paying attention to a sign, and police monitoring would increase operational expense on an on-going basis, vs a one time capital cost of implementing an on-the-road obstacle.
Cheers,
Dan
Thanks for the comments Dan. I remember your email and thankfully now we have this report and some policy in place, we can look at different options for each area of concern.
I’ll be sure to bring these comments and more to staff as they present this report.
Mike