Winnipeg councillors consider traffic study for Cambridge Street among other calming measures

A Winnipeg man who designed a car-counting machine as part of a long-term effort urging drivers on his street to slow down is pleased a motion calling for a traffic management plan for Cambridge Street is moving forward. 

Last week, the city centre community committee passed a motion from River Heights-Fort Garry Coun. John Orlikow, asking city staff to come up with an interim short-term traffic management program and a long-term traffic management plan for the street, which runs from Wellington Crescent to Taylor Avenue through the River Heights area.

"I think it represents a movement across the city of people really not being comfortable with the speeds we're seeing in neighbourhoods," said Tim Fennell, a founding member of the neighbourhood group Calm Cambridge.

Fennell said he commonly sees vehicles travelling upwards of 55 kilometres per hour in an area with a speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour.

Along the stretch of Cambridge north of Corydon Avenue, where the street narrows to seven metres wide, Fennell said he has counted as many as 5,000 vehicles per day in an area designed to carry 1,000. 

Data from Manitoba Public Insurance shows higher numbers of traffic collisions on Cambridge compared to other nearby streets, Fennell said.

"A lot of people would say, 'Oh, well, this is an accident waiting to happen,' but … accidents are happening. So yeah, time to do something."

Traffic-calming in street renewals

The motion calling for the traffic plan is one of a number of traffic-calming projects on the agenda of the city's public works committee.

At a meeting next Tuesday, when the committee will consider the motion on the Cambridge traffic study, councillors will also discuss a report recommending the city make traffic-calming measures a standard part of road renewal projects in areas with higher volumes of vulnerable road users.

"The current practice is to only implement traffic calming when it has already been identified as being necessary as the result of a previous study," City of Winnipeg streets manager David Patman wrote in an email statement.

Patman said the public works department is recommending "a more proactive stance" by implementing traffic calming measures whenever road renewal projects happen in areas like a  school or playground zone, at key pedestrian and cyclist connection points, and on a neighbourhood greenway.

The results of the city's ongoing reduced speed neighbourhood pilot project could also influence future traffic-calming measures, if council decides to make the reduced speeds permanent, Patman said.

Kildare Avenue safety program

At a special budget meeting on Friday, the public works committee will also consider whether to fund a traffic safety enhancement program for Kildare Avenue, in Transcona.

A November report to the public works committee noted that the street was the site of a fatal collision in 2022.

A speeding drunk driver hit and killed 24-year-old Jordyn Reimer as she was driving down Kildare at Bond Street on May 1, 2022. 

Reimer's mother, Karen Reimer, told CBC News she wishes the intersection had a four-way stop, rather than the current two-way stop heading north-south along Bond.

"If Jordyn had had the chance to stop and look and see that truck barrelling down at over 100 kilometres an hour, I believe she would not have entered the intersection. That would have saved her life," she said.

City spokesperson Julie Dooley confirmed to CBC News that a four-way stop at Kildare and Bond was recently approved.

The report on the Kildare traffic safety program notes that area Coun. Russ Wyatt did not support adding four-way stops, instead preferring roundabouts. The report states there are a number of difficulties with that option, including space requirements and a potential cost of $20 million.

In an interview, Wyatt dismissed those concerns.

"It's not an expensive problem.… It's just a question of doing the proper design," Wyatt said. "Typically, when I hear that from the bureaucrats, it's just because the bureaucrats don't want to do something."

The public works committee will vote on the Cambridge traffic plan and traffic-calming measures in local street renewals at its March 5 meeting.