Residential speed limits drop to 40 km/h in Calgary as of May 31

Speed limit on residential streets reduced to 40 The speed limit on residential streets will drop from 50 to 40 km/h next week. Kevin Fleming reports.

CALGARY — City councillors say Calgarians have been asking for lower speed limits in residential areas for years and now they're doing something about it. Drivers will have to go 10 kilometres an hour slower as of May 31 as the residential speed limit is dropping to 40 km/hr.

"This is the new default speed limit," said Tony Churchill, a senior traffic safety engineer with the city.

"It's 40 km/h unless otherwise posted, so if there's a posted speed limit, that speed applies and if it's not posted along the length of the roadway, then it's 40.

The impact will be small, said Churchill.

"When you think about it you probably only spend less than a tenth of your trip on a local road where the speed limit's changing, the majority of your trip you're on larger roads where the speed limit isn't changing."

City data shows there are an average 9,100 collisions per year on streets inside Calgary neighbourhoods, with an average of 550 of those resulting in serious injury or death.

Churchill says reducing speeds on residential roads will make them safer.

"It is truly safer and it's really just the kinetic energy and our human body's ability to accommodate those impact forces," said Churchill.

"There's a lot of things that cause collisions, but at the end of the day once those mistakes have been made and the collision happens, it's really the impact energy which is a function of speed."

The city says travelling at a slower speed gives a driver more time to react, broadens their field of vision and reduces how severe crashes are when they happen. The City of Calgary Standard Speed Limit Bylaw was passed at a Feb. 1 strategic meeting of council.

Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra would have liked to see the speeds reduced even further, to 30 km/h on residential streets.

"With this coming into effect right now, we're all going to have some learning to do," said Carra. "I suspect that a lot of the streets that are going to 40 are not going to see a lot of change because they're designed in such a way that 40 is the natural way to go."

The cost of the speed limit reduction is just under $2 million. There is an education component budgeted at $300,000 with the rest going towards new signage.

"As a society we spend a lot of time in our cars and I can appreciate that it's much more enjoyable to be spending time at home with your family or doing other fun things," said Churchill. "But really at the end of the day it's a couple minutes and it really does mean life changing incidents for people."

The city has also developed an online tool called the travel time calculator. Drivers can type in the start and finish points of their trip and the calculator will display the difference in speed under different speed scenarios.

"Our system right now is set up to rely on perfect human behaviour which we know really isn't a thing," said Churchill.

"So this is really about setting up a system so that when those mistakes are made, which we know happens, that the outcomes will be less sever."

Learn more about the city's speed reduction plan online.