The City of Orillia is looking at ways to make introducing traffic calming measures in city neighbourhoods a more lenient process.
During a recent city council meeting, councillors Jeff Czetwerzuk and Jay Fallis brought the idea forward, asking that city staff report back on the feasibility of making the city’s traffic calming policy more lenient and reducing the traffic calming points requirement for local and collector roads.
“There's a series of traffic data and road characteristics that will attribute to whether a road qualifies for traffic calming or not,” Czetwerzuk said. “While this criteria is very good, we want to see if there's any room for improving it and making (it) a bit more lenient.”
Czetwerzuk noted the points metrics for meeting traffic calming requirements do not always weigh resident concerns equally.
“We want to make sure the weighting represents exactly the issues that are going on in the streets, and how we can properly use those weights to determine whether it is realistic to have traffic calming or not on the street,” he said.
Fallis lamented that none of the neighbourhood petitions for traffic calming measures have been implemented in the past few years.
“In the last couple of years, around six (neighbourhood petitions) have been submitted and none have qualified for traffic calming measures to be enacted,” he said. “It's fair to say, like there's probably some justification for not accepting every single road, but at the same time, I think there's a balance.”
“Ensuring that this policy is responsive to those in these neighbourhoods, where we hear countless complaints about speeding, I think is very important,” he said.
Council supported Czetwerzuk and Fallis’s request, and directed city staff to prepare a report by June 17.
“If we can come up with some kind of calming measures to make it easier for people to walk with their children, ride their bikes … without having some safety issues for our children, I think it's really important,” said Coun. Ralph Cipolla.
