To be clear, they changed the unsigned speed limit from 50 to 40. And then slapped 50 signs up on any collector roads that weren't already signed that way.
Minimal real world results. Technically you could drive 50 kph by any house in the city not in a playground zone. Now its 40. But there's no enforcement so people can continue to do whatever the hell they want.
And from
@whatchyyc the key summary:
For the Street Manual, the concept of Target Speed is used for Design Speed. Design Speed is the philosophy of designing for the expected 85th percentile speed of motorists. Target Speed is the speed at which the designer intends for traffic to operate and is consistent with the Posted Speed Limit (i.e., legal speed limit)
A well-designed street encourages appropriate street user behaviour, makes the desired operating speed self-explanatory, and supports the posted speed limit. In some cases, especially on longer stretches of straight roadway where there are no obvious speed or sight line constraints for operators of motor vehicles, this may require introducing traffic management elements that encourage drivers to operate at the Target Speed.
Traffic management interventions to ensure Target Speed is reinforced for straight-running streets longer than 125 m
Local Street: 30 km/h
Collector Street: 40 km/h (30 km/h in certain areas such as playgrounds and high activity areas, such as schools and neighbourhood commercial areas)
Design Speed matches Target Speed
This is the real revolution here - designing for those slower speeds. This is what was missing from the speed limit changes a few years ago. The speed limit changes were seen as a first, but incomplete, step to to the bigger objective of actually slowing down vehicles. It's well known that design slows vehicles, not limits - particularly if design is for a higher speed than the limit. I don't think many understand this - our roads were always designed to be faster than the limit even at 50km/h, even more so when some were dropped to 40km/h.
For example, imagine the city is rebuilding some neighbourhood streets a few locals and collectors - a project that occurs a dozen or so times across the city each year. Unless that street is targeted by some specific capital program to change the design, the rules are stick to the design manuals - build it back so 85% of traffic will go less than 50km/h. This means the city will do a ton of construction and put back the same stop signs, no new crosswalks or bump-outs, nothing - it's effectively a like-for-like, with no traffic calming considered in most situations, because the design standards tell you not to consider anything different. Spend all that time and money and all you're doing is buying another 30 years of pavement lifecycle and dangerous driver behaviour.
Now do that same random project again with updated standards. Now, you have to build to the design speed not above it. 30 or 40km/h not 50km/h plus. You also have to apply that 125m rule - that's a serious change if properly implemented. Currently we have many (most?) local, collectors and arterials
with hundreds of metres or even kilometres without any design interventions to slow speeds. No stop signs, no bump-outs to improve visibility, stupid crosswalks that can't line up with the other curb because the vehicle turn radii is set to support 50km/h instead of 30km/h turning.
In many areas with above standard lane widths, you no longer have a design manual supporting their existence. That space becomes available. Take all that together and it's a huge change.
It starts to defang the shadowy black-box of street design that has been immune to public input. It makes it possible for 311s to actually work - no longer do you have to submit endless calls for a traffic study just to have it return with something equivalent to "You are wrong about the conditions in your neighbourhood. No intervention is needed on the street your kids walk to school on, as speeds are within acceptable limits on your street - average speeds are only 49km/h only 14% of people are observed to be travelling about 50km/h on your residential street. You are also not allowed to get that crosswalk you want as the design manual discourages it and stop signs will unduly slow down that traffic. Please call us back if someone is killed."
It'll be slow in practice to implement, but this is actually a huge step to design streets that are accurate livable for anyone except a car. A ray of hope out there for this stuff!
