RETHINKING OUR ROADS & ROAD SAFETY

Let’s start a new discussion about building a community that we want to live in and spend time in rather than just drive through on our way to another destination. Over the last eleven years, I have spoken about a different vision for our community: a balance of urban and rural; of heritage and the future. I crave new conversations: a new way to build community. Connecting people with their lived environment. I want to create a walkable community together and be thoughtful of what we will leave for our children and grandchildren. Safe, walkable roads are an integral part to the equation and recipe for a livable city. I am not a professional city planner. I don’t have all the answers. I haven’t solved all of our city planning problems. However, I am deeply passionate about having these conversations, learning how we can improve and I am dedicated to progressive planning principles that will lead to a resilient, sustainable future. I often find myself completely immersed in the words and the work of others and I’m happy to have even been referred to as a bit of a“nerd'' when it comes to my interest and passion for building communities and that is something I wear proudly. The work and words of city planner Jeff Speck have been incredibly inspiring to me and encompass many of the visions I have for what a walkable city really is. The ideas and steps which he has laid out for making places better encompasses many of the discussions I as mayor want to have. As I share with you my platform and perspective on what I plan as mayor to bring to the conversation I will share with you many of the steps Jeff Speck has laid out. “Streets must be designed to encourage the speeds that we have set for them, or the result will be illegal, deadly speeding”. The points Jeff Speck makes throughout the books he has written on the building of liveable cities, focus in on different aspects of the street, how they are designed as well as managed. And while many of his ideas serve multiple objectives as he puts it “they all aim back, in one way or another, at a single issue: vehicle speed.” He speaks powerfully on the relationship between vehicle speed and danger describing the relationship between the two as exponential. He further states “While many different factors influence the safety of humans in cities, none matter nearly so much as the speed at which vehicles are traveling.” So, what are some of the conversations we can have surrounding this focus on speeding and overall road safety? Street design should focus on reducing illegal speeding, we need to discuss the trade-offs between speed and safety honestly and ask ourselves if we would rather have a community that is quick to drive in and through or one that is worth arriving at? We can look to adopt a new lower downtown area speed limit and look to make the bold step of creating a political movement around road safety by joining and supporting the Vision Zero movement. Vision Zero began decades ago in Sweden and has now become an international movement. Vision Zero provides a framework for not only raising the profile of pedestrian safety but also providing real ways to change it. Road safety is now being considered a public health problem, in fact the World Health Organization has labeled road traffic collisions as a major global health hazard and as one of the leading and fastest growing causes of disability and death. Vision Zero Canada has considered traffic collisions to have reached the level of an epidemic and it aims to give the same attention that other communicable diseases have received worldwide. Vision Zero makes the statement that road traffic accidents are not actually accidental at all but are predictable and preventable, this places road safety measures as a shared responsibility between transportation and public health officials. I would love to share more as my platform unfolds about Vision Zero as well as steps that can be taken now to see real change and safer roads in our community. As mayor I want to facilitate discussions around road safety the kind that include real and proven new ways of thinking. Justifying biking investments, the benefits of curbside parking, building slow flow streets, the immense and undervalued use of street trees and lighting, our need for a community wide walkability study are all much needed conversations that need to occur when looking at our road infrastructure. It is not enough to just say we need to “fix it” or to talk about the mere completion of our road infrastructure that is still needing to occur, we need to think bigger… we need to think better