Residential Traffic Safety Strategy
Residential traffic safety is hugely important to Calgarians. Every month my office receives numerous phone calls from residents expressing concerns about the residential streets in their communities.
I believe that Calgarians have a right to feel safe on their residential streets. Appropriate speed, appropriate signage, better pedestrian, cyclist and motorist infrastructure and user attentiveness are just a few factors that contribute to making our streets safer.
We are making progress towards making our streets safer. If we look at the data we can see that we have seen a reduction in fatalities on our roads since 2013:
While these trends are certainly positive, I believe there is more that we could be doing. In January of 2016 I brought a Notice of Motion to Council that I felt would improve residential traffic safety even further. Below is a copy of my Motion:
My Motion made a request through the Calgary Police Commission that the Calgary Police Service (CPS) consider the development of a residential traffic enforcement strategy. This strategy will focus on high risk residential areas, utilize citizen feedback and place emphasis on better public awareness.
I believe that addressing this issue is multi-faceted. Motorists are not the only user of our residential streets that have a responsibility to make roads safer. Motorists, cyclists and pedestrians must all be willing to do their part.
In order for this plan to successful we need to focus on enforcement, education and the ability for the public to provide feedback. All of these elements are built into the report that CPS presented to committee this week.
You can find a full copy of the report by clicking on the image below:
Here are a few of the highlights:
- The CPS Traffic Section currently utilizes a model of automated enforcement (red light/speed on green intersection cameras, and mobile photo radar units) and several teams of manned traffic enforcement. The Section will enhance these functions by refocusing resources to form a team that combines automated and manned enforcement dedicated exclusively to residential traffic enforcement.
- The Section will engage with the community in regularly scheduled Traffic Safety Town Halls and collect and analyse the information from these events. The Section will also communicate the results of these meetings and work done to address identified traffic safety issues. Traffic statistics for each Ward as well as data on Traffic Service Requests will be provided online.
- CPS will continue incorporating traffic safety education into the Start Smart Stay Safe program curriculum. This has program has made traffic safety education available to all schools in the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District.
I am very pleased with this report and the positive impacts it could have on our communities. I look forward to seeing this report approved by Council and implemented prior to the start of the next school year.
