THUNDER BAY – The Arundel Street Active Living Corridor is not only a well-tread path for cyclists and pedestrians among city roads. It's also the site of the most drivers breaking the speed limit.
City council tasked its administration with finding solutions to Arundel Street's high-speed traffic challenge at its meeting on Monday.
Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds said Arundel’s sightlines are poor, particularly near high residential buildings, many of which are occupied by seniors.
He cited a July 18 report to council, which showed the 85th percentile of motorists are travelling 60 kilometres per hour on the 50-kilometre-per-hour road, the highest among the urban streets studied.
“The evidence is pretty clear,” Foulds said.
“Traffic volumes are up 30 per cent in that corridor and the speeds are consistently 10 kilometres over the speed limit.”
Foulds encouraged administration to look outside the province for solutions, motivated by the public’s response to the issue on his personal Facebook page. He was overwhelmed with the diversity of traffic-calming responses among his constituents, some of which included European infrastructure initiatives like roundabouts and traffic islands to slow drivers down.
Coun. Linda Rydholm recalled a 2014 debate over vehicle speed across the city, recounting motorists racing on Porcupine Boulevard. She said traffic signs and digital speed monitors aren’t keeping drivers honest.
“People like to drive fast in this city. I don’t know why society is doing this,” Rydholm said.
“To me, it’s enforcement and I hope it will be identified in the report back to council.”
Coun. Aldo Ruberto agreed with Rydholm on enforcement, adding he would support cameras that could capture license plates of speeding vehicles to fine the drivers.
“It’s a simple solution. Technology does the work for you. You set up cameras, the person speeding takes a picture, sends them the bill, collect the money,” Ruberto said.
“But the attitudes of people when there are low penalties, they disregard the speed limit and drive as fast as they want.”
