Community Safety In Burlington, Ontario

I asked Chris about two major things. One was a concern brought to me by a resident that was worried about traffic calming measures interfering with emergency response. Another was whether or not we can repurpose the cameras from our automated speed enforcement program.

Good Morning Rowen.

Apologies for the delayed response and it was great meeting you as well.

Impacts to emergency services are well understood within the traffic engineering field, and we work closely with Fire, EMS, and Police to, as best as possible, mitigate potential effects.

Traffic calming measures are generally not installed on priority emergency response routes, such as roads in close proximity to emergency service stations or those identified as key response corridors.  There are also limitations to where traffic calming can be applied based on the road type (i.e. we would not install speed cushions on an arterial road, or a road with a significant grade). 

Where traffic calming is appropriate, we and other municipalities (as traffic calming measures are fairly common around the province) also apply design strategies to reduce impacts. For example, where appropriate, split speed humps are commonly used, as they allow wider emergency vehicles to straddle the device while still providing effective speed reduction for general traffic. Based on this any delay to emergency vehicles is typically minor, and design and location selection strategies are used to help mitigate these effects.

Through the City’s traffic calming program, vertical measures such as speed humps and cushions are typically the measures implemented in Burlington, and we have observed good performance in reducing vehicle speeds.

Horizontal measures, such as curb extensions or chicanes, can also be effective in influencing driver behaviour. In our experience and based on guidance from the Transportation Association of Canada and the Ontario Traffic Manuals notes they require sufficient roadway width and careful design to maintain emergency access, drainage, and winter maintenance operations. Raised crosswalks also share some of these issues, many times at intersections there are catch basins or manholes which limit the ability to place raised crosswalks (without significant cost and construction). These measures can also have impacts on large vehicle maneuverability and snow clearing, and they can be more costly depending on the materials used/construction required and the required maintenance. As a result, they are typically considered as part of larger capital projects, such as road reconstructions, rather than through standalone traffic calming reviews.

With respect to automated enforcement (ASE), we were a few months away from launching our program when the province revoked the ability for municipalities to use ASE. Some municipalities with established programs were/are looking at repurposing cameras for other uses, but we did not have any installed (they were going to be rentals) at the time of cancellation. We will be looking at options through our Road Safety Strategic plan which was approved to move forward at the last council and committee meeting.

Thanks again for your patience.