Traffic lawyer Paul Doroshenko comes on to unpack the push to lower residential speed limits.
Vancouver wants to hit the brakes. Literally. City Council considering dropping speed limits to 30km an hour on all neighbourhood streets, possibly lowering limits on some other major streets, too. They say it’s about safety, of course. Opponents say it’s unnecessary.
“Pete Fry is right — people aren’t driving 50 km/h because it would just feel completely unsafe as a driver. So the government — the provincial government, the city — can come along and change the speed limit, and it’s probably not going to affect anybody. But there’s no enforcement, as you pointed out. There’s zero enforcement on side streets. There’s very little traffic enforcement in Vancouver generally. And on these side streets, go ahead — make it 30 on some of them. It’s not going to change any behaviour because most people aren’t driving 50 km/h anyway.”
Listen to Paul Doroshenko on the Mike Smyth Show discussing lowering residential speed limits here.