At the risk of being that that guy, I want to foster a conversation about the speed at which people drive in Woodpark.
I walk my two dogs every day on the streets in Woodpark. Every day I see many people disregarding the 30 kph speed limit. As I reign in the dogs to keep them and myself safe, I wonder what can I do?
The City of Ottawa conducted a traffic study on April 5th and 6th with the capture device located on a No Parking post between 474 Woodland and the church on the west side of Woodland Avenue. Traffic in both directions was captured. The report and the source material for my analysis can be reviewed below. My observations are borne out by this study.
I have somewhat discounted the data from April 5th as that was the day an ice storm hit our city. Even with that storm, the data shows that 75% of the drivers on that slippery day were exceeding the 30 kph speed limit. The next day, traffic more than doubled and driving behaviours were even worse. A whopping 80% did not adhere to the speed limit and 7% of those were more than traveling at more than 40 kph. I think that the location for the capture device was badly planned. This location was just north of the recently installed speed hump and that speed hump almost certainly skewed the data lower.
Were you one of the speeding drivers? Some think that 30 kph seems to be too slow, however keep this in mind. “Pedestrians can typically survive impact speeds of around 30 km/hr, above which the chance of survival decreases dramatically.” Source: Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals
A long-time resident of Woodland Avenue, Greg Taylor worked with our Councillor’s office and obtained the study for us and says “It is time for Ottawa Police Service to address issues in Woodpark. For me the major issues are high speeds and vehicle drivers, bicycle riders and e-bike riders running stop signs. A secondary issue is to have pedestrians walk on the correct side of the street facing traffic.” I agree!
There was a time that I might have been able to deftly jump out of the way of a speeding vehicle. Not so much anymore and my dogs, well sometimes, they are just oblivious to traffic.
So back to my original thought… what can I do? Well, for one I can keep my driving to the speed limit. I usually do, but there have been occasions where I slip up. Next, I can write a blog post to foster conversation about the topic and hope that people read it and think about their own driving behaviours. Additionally, I think we need to request additional traffic studies in Woodpark on streets that will more accurately capture speed and traffic data. Perhaps the two main east/west streets, Lawn & Midway. Finally, we need to keep lobbying the City of Ottawa, through our Councillor, to implement more and better traffic calming measures.
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