Sunset on a residential street in Calgary – Councillors vote Monday, Feb 1st on reducing the unposted residential speed limit from 50km/h to 40km/h. The 10km/h difference will be a step towards making our streets safer City wide, and not just on a case-by-case basis.
In an open letter sent to the Mayor and City of Calgary Councillors, Bike Calgary emphasized the importance of the Monday 1st February vote to say “YES” to a residential speed limit of 40km/h.
A reduction of 10km/h changes the physics and health outcomes for both drivers and pedestrians in the case of a collision. Fatalities, injuries, and even near-miss collisions on our roadways have a tremendous cost on our society year-over-year. These costs include impacts to emergency response, traffic congestion from accidents and lost productivity. In 2018 a study of the societal costs of traffic collisions in Alberta showed that for each roadway injury collision costs over $200,000, while each fatality
collision costs over $7,000,000.
A delay vote to a plebiscite of 10 months will perpetuate further impacts of approximately 7,500 incidents that occur in our communities in that period. Statistically around 450 of these will result in serious injury or death.
Calgary is falling behind the curve in not implementing lower residential speed limits. This has already been done in desirable Calgary communities such as Crescent Heights, Upper Mount Royal, and by our neighbouring municipalities in Cochrane, Chestermere, Canmore, as well as Edmonton.
You can share and sign the Project Calgary petition:
https://www.projectcalgary.org/safer_neighbourhood_streets
and write an email to your Councillors ahead of Monday, February 1st.
If you do not know your Councillor or how to contact your Councillor, the City of Calgary has this helpful page:
https://www.calgary.ca/citycouncil/findyourcouncillor.html
And here are their direct email addresses:
themayor@calgary.ca, eaward1@calgary.ca, eaward2@calgary.ca, eaward3@calgary.ca, eaward4@calgary.ca, eaward5@calgary.ca, eaward6@calgary.ca, eaward7@calgary.ca, eaward8@calgary.ca, eaward9@calgary.ca, eaward10@calgary.ca, eaward11@calgary.ca, eaward12@calgary.ca, eaward13@calgary.ca, eaward14@calgary.ca,
Please feel free to pass this request for action along to any friends, family, or colleagues.
We travel through wards beyond where we live, we do not live our lives in only one part of Calgary. Please write to all councillors who represent wards where you live / go to school / commute through / work / buy goods and services, etc.
Looks like 40km/h was passed by council tonight.