One complaint/concern I receive regularly is about speeding vehicles. (And occasionally there are complaints about posted speeds being too slow.) The seriousness of the complaints is amplified of course by the number of vehicles. The problem is not going to disappear as there are now 830,00 vehicles registered in York Region and far too many of those being to commuters needing to go through King Township .
One of the tools to determine speeds is radar boards. Our ability to deploy them has been restricted to availability of one to borrow from YR. (Yes, King used to have one but they were stolen.) Council has directed to Staff (COW 9/10/12) to purchase a trailer mounted radar speed board featuring enhancements to assist with compiling relevant traffic information and data.
At our Committee of Whole working session on Sept. 10th Engineering & Operations made a presentation about Traffic Calming. If you believe that some sort of traffic calming would be appropriate on your residential street I encourage you to read here the policy about traffic calming; and then, if you are interested in pursuing use this template of a petition requesting that such be reviewed & considered.
Recently I attended a presentation by Traffic Bureau of York Region Police who has responsibility for road safety on the regional roads. They reviewed their strategies for improving safety: driver education, auditing commercial motor vehicles, targeted enforcement (e.g. RIDE), modifications to road markings to denote pedestrian crossing zones, longer time allowances for crossing at lights (now allowing time for a child or senior to cross vs and adult), new programs directed towards motorcycles, seniors, teens. And continued education about the risks of using cell phones while driving; one statistical trend shocked the room: by 2014/2015 there will be more deaths on Ontario roads due inattentive driving than from alcohol.
I live on 489 Main Street and I’m greatly bothered by the fast cars speeding up and down Main Street, in fact I take my life in my hands backing out my drive way. Something has to be done to slow the traffic down or call for local traffic only.
Sincerely
Irene Bayer
Hello Irene, I suggest you contact Councillor Bill Cober to review with him the problem. As I reviewed in my post there are a couple options including deployment of a radar speed board, and traffic calming measures such as speed bumps. As I commented, for the latter, there needs to be a petition from the neighbourhood.