Edmonton city council is considering lowering the default speed limit – the speed in areas without signs – to make roads safer.
The current default speed limit is 50 km/h, and some city councillors want to decrease it to 40, or even 30 km/h.
A city report shows that dropping the speed limit to 40 km/h would likely lead to six per cent fewer collisions, and bringing it down to 30 km/h bumps the estimate up to 22 per cent.
“The goal of Vision Zero is not to reduce speed,” Ward 10 councillor Michael Walters said. “The goal of Vision Zero is to reduce pedestrian collisions.”
Not all councillors are convinced the change is needed. Ward 5 councillor Sarah Hamilton says some residents in her ward drive a few kilometres on residential roads to get in and out of their neighbourhoods, and this change would add more time to their drive.
“I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but that's really slow; going at 30 or 40 kilometres an hour,” Hamilton said. “It’s tinkering with people's commute and I'm getting the sense of fatigue – that people are tired of the change right now.”
Council will not make a decision in the near future. They have asked for more data, including where collisions with pedestrians have happened.
With files from Jeremy Thompson
