New campaign launched to push lower speed limits in residential areas
A new community group is picking up the torch to push for lower residential speed limits, but this time they’re aiming for a provincewide change.
“We need to reduce the speed. The impact is huge,” said Habib Fatmi, staff member at the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues, which voted unanimously to launch a new 40-km/h campaign at its recent winter general meeting.
The Government of Alberta sets the default speed to 50 km/h on any “highway located within an urban area” through the
Traffic Safety Act. Edmonton city council has debated lowering the speed on residential streets to 40 km/h as recently as 2012, but it cost $500,000 just to test the concept in six pilot neighbourhoods because of the number of speed limit signs needed.
Fatmi said the EFCL campaign will be aimed at provincial legislation to make the shift easier. Since only 45 out of 157 leagues were at the last meeting, he’ll work to build support among the rest of the leagues, before they launch a public campaign and reach out to counterparts in Calgary.
He hopes the success mirrors popular grassroots movements like
20’s Plenty in the United Kingdom, which launched in 2007 and has seen many neighbourhoods in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool make the switch to 20 miles per hour. It increases safety and lets people safely walk and bike in their neighbourhood, Fatmi said, pointing to statistics from the World Health Organization that show pedestrians have a 90 per cent chance of surviving when struck by a vehicle travelling 30 km/h, compared to a less than 50 per cent chance after an impact at 45 km/h.
“It’s a significant difference,” he said. “Enforcement is another issue, but people will start following it.”