Division Avenue—balancing efficiency of travel with safety
Medicine Hat is a rural city, serving many rural areas, with a greater number of work trucks requiring wider roads. Personal vehicles in rural areas are the best way to get around. Public transportation is not yet an easy option. However, as cities grow there are diminishing returns for using personal vehicles as our primary transportation.
When you’re stuck in traffic it's tempting to think adding another lane will ease congestion. It will at first, but simply adding lanes without simultaneously developing other forms of transportation (including multi-use lanes for active transportation, buses and eventually trains) doesn’t create traffic jam free areas. The 401 in Ontario is currently at 18 lanes in the Greater Toronto Area. There are still traffic jams. The widest road on Earth is in Dallas at 26 lanes. More lanes and wider roads isn’t some magic solution.
Highway 401 in Ontario.
Sometimes infrastructure for cars or e-bikes, scooters and pedestrians compete directly for space, but most of the time there are creative ways to deconflict and satisfy both. Every person on a bike or e-scooter is one less person with a car on the road—which means less traffic for drivers.
Individual responsibility vs preventative design
Driving is not a right. You must pass a driving exam to demonstrate you can responsibly pilot a 3,000 lb vehicle. Police enforce laws to hold us personally accountable. But individual responsibility isn’t the only way to create a safe driving environment.
In June 1997, at the intersection of Highway 35 and 335 in Saskatchewan, an entire family of six were killed in a collision with a semi truck. 21 years later, in 2018, at the same intersection Jaskirat Sidhu drove his semi-truck through a stop sign and into the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos hockey team. 16 died. Sidhu accepted responsibility for his actions and is in jail.
On June 15, 2023, near Carberry, Manitoba a bus collided with a semi-truck while crossing the Trans-Canada Highway. 17 seniors were killed. Rather than continue to depend on individual responsibility to navigate this intersection the Government of Manitoba engaged the public to explore preventative design changes to prevent future tragedies.
Preventative design options the Government of Manitoba considered at the intersection of this tragic collision.
With millions of kilometers of roads around the world we know there are different road designs which create different outcomes.
Traffic circles and roundabouts significantly reduce the number of accidents. The primary reason for this reduction is the near elimination of high-impact crash types, such as head-on, left-turn, and right-angle collisions—accidents that typically result in the most severe injuries.
Some of these designs won’t work in all places, but relying on individual responsibility when we know there are safer ways to design roads and intersections is cold comfort to the families affected by these accidents.
Increasing efficiency of travel
But there is also a case for increasing highway speeds. Spruce Grove-Stony Plain MLA Searle Turton argued that increasing highway speeds would make things faster and safer by minimizing drivers zigzagging in and out of traffic. He proposed raising the maximum speed on all non-urban, divided highways — including Highways 1, 2, 3, 4, 16 and 43 — from the current 110 km/h to 120 km/h.
In 2014, British Columbia raised limits on 33 sections of highway by 10 km/h to 120 km/h. After a number of serious and fatal crashes, the government rolled the speed limit back to 110 km/h on 15 sections, but it kept the higher limit on 18 sections.
Vision Zero
Some cities, including Medicine Hat, have adopted Vision Zero, and its goal to achieve zero traffic fatalities. If we reduced highway speed limits to 30 km/hr, we could reduce highway fatalities to zero. That’s not a balance most of us would accept. It is conceivable to me that the measures it would take to get to zero traffic fatalities in town might be too aggressive. And that such measures might impede traffic too much for our taste in Medicine Hat.
The draft Transportation Safety Strategy set a 50% reduction in severe traffic collisions by 2035. We can always change that target up or down depending on whether we want to prioritize safety or efficiency of travel. And there are always plenty of differing strategies to accomplish goals. What’s important is constructively listening to each other and finding common ground.
Number of severe collisions in Medicine Hat.
Division Ave
There are things to deconflict and balance on Division Ave. Division Ave is a transportation corridor. Division Avenue also has two major schools, Hat High and Connaught, with over 1,500 kids within one block. Think of how many young, inexperienced drivers use this area. Think of how often you see drivers looking at their cell phones these days. There are good reasons to try and prevent accidents in this area.
Curb extensions
Curb extensions are intended to slow traffic turns to lower the risk of pedestrian collisions. I agree that the curb outs on 4th St SW and Division (next to Swirls Ice Cream) are too large. I also think it’s a good place for them considering how busy Swirls gets with pedestrian traffic. We just have to make them smaller next time.
Any of these designs comes with downsides, but so does keeping things the same. There are no perfect solutions.
Narrowing of Division
There are two ways to slow down traffic.
Lower the posted speed limit.
Narrow the road.
The first way requires effective police enforcement to change behaviour. The second way uses design to naturally slow traffic. With 1,500 kids in the area for school there are good reasons to slow traffic. Additionally, as you head south, the speed limit is recommended as 30km/hr when Division turns into Old Cemetery Road. You have to slow down in a couple of blocks anyway.
Buses and emergency vehicles
It’s not clear to me these changes make the area less safe. Perhaps, if you’re trying to travel at the same speeds as before.
I agree buses and emergency vehicles have trouble turning at some of the new intersections. That doesn’t mean these principles are wrong, only that their execution needs to be adjusted. There are always endless ways to adjust things to find a better balance.
I disagree that the narrowed roads make it difficult for emergency vehicles to pass. The previous Division Ave design might have had four lanes (technically two unused parking lanes), but it also allowed for on street parking which effectively reduced the roadway to two lanes when vehicles were parked on the road.
Even now there are numerous points where cars can pull off Division (alleys, crossing streets, extended parking lanes) to allow emergency vehicles to pass.
Looking at the placement of Medicine Hat’s three fire stations it’s not clear these changes impact fire routes. We could ask them.
Our three fire stations are the red dots. The red line is Division Ave.
But let’s say it does slow down emergency vehicles. That’s only one factor. It’s harder to quantify the number of accidents which these measures might prevent, thus negating the need for emergency vehicles in the first place.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Progressives and conservatives overuse the slippery slope argument. Not every proposal to increase police means we'll wake up in a fascist state tomorrow. The Division Ave project doesn't mean every street in Medicine Hat is intended to look and function like this one.
Maximizing travel speed in cars is a reasonable choice for Medicine Hat. What’s important is that residents understand the choices and tradeoffs.
Cities are always changing. We can’t change too quickly, but we can’t sit still either. There are endless ways to compromise and find a balance. This issue doesn’t have to be such a fight.
References.
