Longueuil to lower speed limit on all residential streets, take new approach to safety

The city of Longueuil, on Montreal's South Shore, is reducing the speed limit on all residential streets to 30 km/h starting in January of next year. It is also putting in place new traffic calming measures across the city.

The changes are part of an overall effort to get drivers to slow down, city officials said Tuesday.

"This is where people go for a walk, go for a picnic, hang out with their neighbours. Kids play in the street. So we want to make people safer," said Jonathan Tabarah, a Longueuil city councillor.

From now on, instead of responding to individual citizen requests for traffic-calming measures, the Longueuil administration will adopt a sector-based approach.

The city found that in certain neighbourhoods, particularly those that are socio-economically disadvantaged, residents were making fewer requests to improve local safety.

That's why a more systemic approach to neighbourhood safety is needed, said Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier.

"We're shifting from a reactive model to a science-based method guided by recommendations from our teams," she said.

The city cited research that found pedestrians struck by a vehicle have a 90 per cent survival rate when the vehicle is travelling at 30 km/h or less.

If the vehicle is going 50 km/h, that survival rate drops to 25 per cent, said Gabrielle Manseau, a senior advisor with Montérégie public health.

If the vehicle is an SUV or the pedestrian already has physical limitations, their chances of survival are even lower, he said.

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Sector by sector approach

For this initiative, Longueuil has been divided into 15 neighbourhoods, which will be reviewed one by one to reassess safety infrastructure.

Those include speed humps, speed radar signs, new traffic signs, road markings to narrow lanes, added pedestrian crossings and, in the longer term, raised intersections and permanent curb extensions.

The first sector to be analyzed is Maricourt–Castle Gardens in Saint-Hubert, as it is representative — due to its school zones and types of streets — of what exists in other parts of Longueuil, the city said.

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Vieux-Longueuil will be reviewed next.

Over time, the Fournier administration plans to expand its teams so it can accelerate the pace of the safety rollout.

A third measure announced Tuesday is the construction of around 100 permanent speed humps every year, starting next year.

Fournier believes this more systemic approach to neighbourhood safety will lead to gains in both efficiency and cost savings, though she acknowledged it's hard to quantify.

She said the city will still respond to citizen concerns and to urgent situations, like those near schools.

But this new system will help the city address issues in a timely manner, rather than trying to respond to concerns one at a time. When her team took office at city hall in 2021, she said there was a backlog of about 600 citizen requests.

Last year, 78 pedestrians were hit by vehicles in Longueuil.