Quote:
Originally Posted by Djeffery
Highway 59 just north of Woodstock was recently dropped to 60 and 40 between county roads 17 and 33. The intersection of 59 and 33 was the site a few years ago of a collision between a (fortunately empty) school bus and a police cruiser, killing both drivers. A short time later they put a 4 way stop there and dropped the approaches to 60 with rumble strips in all directions. It used to go to 80 north of 17, with a school hours drop to 60 in front of the Oxford School, back to 80 to the top of the hill and back to 60 past the stop sign. Now it's 60 all the way to the top of the hill and 40 through the stop sign. Kind of a ridiculous drop in speed for a county road.
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There are roads like this literally all over the province, and the case of the constantly changing speed limit is also increasingly common where it goes 40-60-80-70-80-60-50-60-80 with each one not longer than a kilometre or two as well. That kind of road just sees many drivers do 60km/h across the whole thing instead of constantly stressing about what the speed limit is on that block.
It's a quite annoying trend in municipal politics which has popped up in the last decade - it has roots in "vision zero". I largely understand lower speed limits in urban areas to protect sensitive road users (cyclists, pedestrians), but artificially low rural speed limits grind my gears. Especially since many have been instituted on a complaints basis by rural residents who all decided they don't like cars going by their houses quickly.
Certain areas have removed most of their 80 limits to the point where there are few remaining municipal roads in their jurisdictions at that limit. Hamilton and York Region come to mind as being particularly restrictive from my experience - Both have reduced 60 to 70 limits on the majority of their rural roads, including many which have 100km/h design speeds and which often even have 4 lanes. Examples abound including Stouffville Road, Warden Avenue, Bloomington, Highway 20 east out of Hamilton, Highway 52.. All roads which can very safely support 80, if not even 90 km/h, but have been posted much lower.
Another trend which is even more common province-wide is even if municipalities maintain the 80 zone in rural areas, they extend reduced speed zones around towns. What used to be a reduced 60 or 50 limit just through the immediate towns now gets extended out a kilometre on either side of the town in the rural area as well, for no obvious safety benefit.
Luckily MTO has largely avoided this trend and provincial highways have seen few such changes.
IMO, the province needs to institute an engineering based formula calculation for rural area speed limits which municipalities are required to adhere to. If a road does not meet the formula, it cannot be reduced. This is common in many US states to prevent this odd form of local NIMBYism in road design and to prevent artificial speed traps. Perhaps allow an appeal to the MTO if you want an exception.
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