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Calming humps
Sometimes it feels as though our municipal public works folks are just messing with us. Tucked near the end of a long agenda at last week’s committee of the whole meeting was a proposal to install speed bumps—no, traffic calming speed humps—on Union Road. Allow that to simmer a moment.
Union Road is a wee left-over road, less than a kilometre long, descending through Mountain View. This stub road remained needlessly connected at both ends after Highway 62 was re-routed a kilometre to the east a couple of decades ago. The new and improved intersection made Union Road redundant for throughtraffic— yet it remained a shortcut for many folks commuting back and forth.
It was always a bit of a risky venture however, weaving down the wooded escarpment on this narrow road—with potential doom looming on either side, then through the built-up collection of homes on the edge of the escarpment and back to the highway. It is why the connection to Highway 62 was moved eastward—to accommodate safer movement of through-traffic.
But old habits….
Over the past decade municipal staff had recommended closing the top of Union Road, eliminating the riskiest portion and sending through traffic to the modern safe intersection, about 30 seconds farther east. But on each occasion, howls of protest emerged from a handful of folks claiming all sorts of nonsensical benefits of leaving it open. So stalemate. Council couldn’t go forward or back.
After about five years of this, public works officials finally insisted that something had to be done. It was an accident waiting to happen. Either council close it, or rebuild it.
In their wisdom, the outgoing council chose to rebuild. It ended up costing taxpayers about $600,000 (the original estimate pegged reconstruction costs to be $1 million). For a wee and utterly redundant shortcut.
The work was done over two years and completed in 2016. It was entirely predictable that this smooth new downhill chicane would become a popular short cut again. Especially for speedsters careening down the hill.
So, in response, the County’s traffic committee has recommended speed humps for the bottom of this teensy road, to be installed a few dozen metres before Belleville-bound traffic is required to come to a full stop at the intersection with 62.
“Traffic calming speed humps” are distinguished from “speed bumps”, it seems, by the severity of their rise and fall. The sensation in the vehicle is a little less pronounced with a traffic calming speed hump, yet a firm reminder of the motorist’s speed, and the need to slow down.
In order for these humps to work on rural roads, however, it is necessary to install imposing bollards on the side of the road as well, to discourage drivers from maneuvering around the “traffic calming speed humps”.
The cost of each traffic calming speed hump is about $10,000.
The Public Works chief gamely made the case for the humps, suggesting it was a pilot project to determine their effectiveness in slowing traffic. He added that Union Road offered a good control subject for the experiment—in that it is short and the outcome would be measurable.
He suggested, too, that it could be a more cost-effective way to enforce speed limits than sending police at regular intervals to issue tickets.
Council wasn’t buying it. The bitter taste of the “million dollar Union Road” was still fresh in their mouths.
Council made short work of the recommendation. None could muster support for the idea.
So traffic calming speed bumps died. For now. But such notions never really stay dead. They typically rise over and over again, like zombies emerging from their graves at dusk.
But, perhaps, the only enduring lesson from this sorry episode is the point outgoing Sophiasburgh councillor Kevin Gale makes in response to residents insisting that their road be improved next.
“Remember that when your road gets better, cars are going to go faster,” said Gale. “Then they come back and ask us to reduce the speed limit.”
It is a useful bit of caution—a rhetorical speed hump, so to speak—for a new and energetic council.
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