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Remember no one is asking for an end to traffic calming, just TC reform. You be the judge.
From
The Ottawa Citizent
"It is critical that our emergency services -- fire, ambulance, police -- get to the emergencies quickly. These are life-and-death situations, and delays can be serious," said Ottawa-Carleton police Insp. Tyrus Cameron, who is in charge of the 911 service.
Fire crews were stopped short, nine metres from the blaze, by iron posts designed to calm traffic. The posts, put up about five years ago to prevent traffic from zooming through the small residential street, are placed at opposite sides of the road with a chain strand between them. Rather than waste precious seconds going around the block, a tanker truck pushed over the posts.
On the heels of that fire, Ottawa Fire Chief Gary Richardson warned it is only a matter of time before delays caused by traffic-calming devices result in serious consequences. Other emergency service providers agree.
"We try and get to our patients as quickly as we can, and on some ambulance calls -- where somebody is not breathing like a heart attack or drowning -- every second counts," said Bob Burnett, operations manager for Ottawa-Carleton Regional Ambulance Service.
For fire, ambulance and police vehicles travelling to an accident scene, every second is important and a momentary delay because of speed humps and road barriers can mean the difference between life and death, said Emile Therrien, head of the Canada Safety Council.
Though the fire on Cambridge Street is the latest catalyst for debate, the complaints over traffic-calming are not limited to that small street. Both Mr. Therrien and Fire Chief Richardson also oppose the series of speed humps along Lyon Street leading up to the Queensway on-ramp.
Mr. Therrien, who argued in vain against traffic-calming last summer, said Ottawa-Carleton's traffic-calming program represents "poor policy, smacks of parochialism and political opportunism, and flies in the face of common sense."
"The real implication of all this is that the speed bumps impede you, they slow down the response time of those getting to an emergency," he said.
But some politicians and community activists say Fire Chief Richardson is using an unrelated incident to beat up on traffic-calming.
"I don't know what this fire has to do with speed humps on Lyon Street. On two occasions in the past they've been to that area. They know which side of the street to come from. I have a problem understanding what the fire chief's problem is," said David Seaborn, one of several community activists who fought to install the barrier on Cambridge Street.
Mr. Seaborn says five years ago, Cambridge was a virtual speed alley as cars, trucks and buses used it as a throughway. Fearing for their safety, residents persuaded the city to block a section of the street. To allow access for emergency and maintenance vehicles, they erected posts with a chain between them. The chain could be cut or unlocked with a key in an emergency.
He said Cambridge operates essentially like any of the several dead-end streets in the city, and there is no reason for the fire chief to single it out for criticism.
Others say traffic-calming opponents are using the fire on Cambridge Street as an excuse to reopen the debate.
"Blocking off the street is not traffic-calming, it is traffic diversion," says Regional Councillor Linda Davis, a proponent of traffic-calming.
The controversy over Cambridge Street reflects a deep division over traffic calming in Ottawa-Carleton.
First developed in Europe to curb motorists racing through neighbourhoods and endangering people, traffic-calming later spread to North America.
Municipalities are using a variety of measures -- raised intersections, road narrowing, traffic circles and tree-lined boulevards -- to slow down speed demons. But the most favoured device is the speed hump, a low hump in the road.
Last September, over the objections of the emergency services, regional council approved several traffic-calming measures, including speed humps on major arterial roads including Lyon Street, Kirkwood Avenue, Merivale Road and Parkdale Avenue. Up to $6 million were budgeted for the measures. These measures are in addition to others planned by the City of Ottawa. Other roads such as Woodroffe Avenue and Main Street would be studied for calming.
Proponents see calming measures as life-savers, ridding streets of dangerous motorists. But opponents dub them dangerous bottlenecks that fuel road rage and endanger lives.
The controversy is not limited to Ottawa-Carleton. In several U.S. cities, supporters and opponents are hurling insults and statistics at each other over the issue. One California fire department has threatened a lawsuit against a residents' association because speed humps are delaying fire responses by about a minute -- a lifetime in emergency situations.
Transportation experts agree that traffic-calming is a two-edged sword: While studies in places ranging from British Columbia to Denmark and Germany have shown that calming does reduce collisions and other accidents, it has disadvantages.
Doug Brousseau, the region's senior official responsible for traffic safety, says there has been a dramatic reduction in speeding on Lyon Street since the humps went in.
"There were people going 70 km/h on Lyon (the posted speed limit is 50 km/h). Nobody does 70 km/h on Lyon any more," Mr. Brousseau said, who added the region will review the program next spring.
But he says the kind of barriers on Cambridge will never find their way on regional roads.
"The ultimate way of calming traffic is to stop it from going through your neighbourhood," he said.
"But road closures are not an option for regional roads."