Riverside Drive Traffic Calming Process Flawed

The District of North Vancouver has not followed its own traffic calming policy when it installed the speed humps on Riverside Drive.

 
The traffic calming policy in effect in 2001 in the District of North Vancouver is an ammended version of the Hamilton Associates Traffic Calming Programs and Procedures report which was accepted by council in 1999.
 
The original version of the document submitted by Hamilton Associates stated that:
Traffic calming measures would generally only apply to local roads which are not bus routes or major emergency routes in the District of North Vancouver. Section 1.3 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy
This was subsequenty ammended by a recommendation to council from the Transportation Planning Dept:
It is a recommendation from staff that minor collector roads also be included in the policy. Attachment 2 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy
The road definitions were also clarified in this recommendation:
Local Roads: The main function is to provide property access. Traffic movement is of secondary importance and primarily involves travel to and from a collector facility. Trip length is short.
 
Collector Roads: The main function is to collect and distribute traffic into and out of a neighbourhood, and provide property access.
            Minor collector Roads: Those collectors that are not a bus route and not a major emergency route.
 
Arterial Roads: The main function is to carry trips of longer duration and through traffic, as well as accommodate significant volumes of traffic.
Riverside drive is at least a minor collector road and at most a collector road. It is the major emergency route for all 261 homes in Seymour Valley East but is not a bus route. It collects traffic from Treetop, Riverbank, Rivergrove, Chapman, Edgewater, and Swinburne.
 
The traffic policy was not followed in the following ways:
  1. Insufficent Support: At least 50% of homes must return their surveys and the majority of these must support traffic calming. Section 2.2 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy Only 44% of our homes returned their surveys. 107 surveys were returned Context report p4 from a total of 261 homes residents petition. 
     
  2. No consensus was reached: The meetings will use group decision making techniques to encourage consensus building toward the selection of a preferred solution. Section 3.4 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy Strongest support was for doing all of the traffic safety improvements Context report p5.
     
    No concensus was reached to do only the 4 speed hump option and no vote was taken at the second meeting to confirm what the preferred solution was. The option to do "No traffic calming" was conspicuously absent from the list of alternatives presented. Attendees were requested to drive over existing speed humps and most expected that a third meeting would be held.
     
  3. Funding by the district: Funding of traffic calming projects will only be considered for those projects where the existing conditions in the neighbourhood exceed at least one of the minimum operational thresholds shown in the following table Section 4.1 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy:
     
    CHARACTERISTIC MINIMUM THRESHOLD POSITION
    Traffic Infiltration 50% or more of traffic is through traffic
    Excessive speeds 85th percentile operating speed is 16k/h over the posted speed limit or greater
    Traffic Volume Traffic volume is greater than 3,000 vehicles per day
    Attachment 5 of 1999 Traffic Calming Policy    .
     
    Riverside drive meets none of these criteria. Infiltration is 0% since there is only one way in and one way out. The 85th percentile was 14.5k/h over the posted speed limit and the traffic volume was 2180 on Feb 22, 2001 Report To Council July 3, 2001 by Donna Howes.