The City of Ottawa is poised to approve rules that will allow the speed of a residential street to be automatically lowered to 40 km/h if 60% of the residents on the street agree. According to a story on CBC’s website, this policy will go to city council for final approval on October 28th.

The intent of this is to make residential streets safer by making drivers drive slower. But this is only going to work if there is increased enforcement with less tolerance for drivers exceeding the posted speed limit. Since many police officers give drivers a 10 km/h “cushion” before they issue a ticket a street that has it’s limit lowered is really having it lowered to 50 km/h.

Instead of lowering the limit to 40 km/h, a street that has 60% of its residents agreeing that the limit should be lowered should be subject to aggressive zero-tolerance speed limit enforcement. Be clocked going less than 10 km/h over the limit and receive a written warning the first time, and a fine subsequent times. (Of course, vehicles clocked going more than 10 km/h over should receive a fine on the first offense.)

And it occurs to me that this could have ramifications for bus routes on residential streets that have had the speed limit lowered, particularly for routes that are on many of these streets. The affected routes are going to need to have their schedules adjusted to respect the lower limits, or you’re going to see bus drivers pushing the limits to adhere to their schedules.