Reducing Speed Limits - A Short History (with no conclusion)
Two Thirds of British Columbians Would Reduce Speed Limits
Photo credit: Nicholas Pescod/CHEK News
Interest in reducing speed limits in urban/suburban areas, particularly on local residential streets, largely grew from the introduction of 'Vision Zero' principles. The Union of BC Municipalities has passed a number of resolutions since 1999 aimed at making it easier to implement lower speed zones than the blanket municipal 50 km/h limit that is currently specified under BC's MVA. The most recent was in 2019 - the text of the resolution provides some useful background information. Note that the Road Safety Law Reform Group, of which BCCC has been a prominent member, has morphed into our MVA Reform Committee. The Modernizing the Motor Vehicle Act report generated by the RSLRG deals with municipal speed limits in recommendations 6 and 7, beginning on p 14.
Another BC resource is the BC Community Road Safety Toolkit. See the top of Module 2 for discussion of urban speed limits. The Toolkit was generated by a process which included stakeholder committees, including BCCC representatives and Kay Teschke, lead on the UBC Cycling in Cities project. These committees have since been disbanded and the Toolkit is no longer prominently located (although it can still be found with a little digging). Rather, a new and rather disappointing Road Safety Strategy has been rolled out. It acknowledges Vision Zero, but appears to misunderstand or misrepresent the overarching principles and largely excludes community stakeholder input.
MoTI had invited municipalities to participate in reduced speed zone pilot projects a couple of years ago and several municipalities expressed interest (including, Victoria, Saanich, Vancouver and North Vancouver) but at some point the program lost steam. Several municipalities have since decided to go it alone (Victoria, North Cowichan, West Kelowna, Saanich, North Vancouver, Vancouver) and make do with the tools currently at their disposal, which consist of by-laws and a lot of speed limit signs. (Note that the UBCM resolutions and the MMVA doc (and presumably the shelved pilot projects) called for blanket speed zones which would only have to be signed on the approaches, significantly reducing materials, labour and visual clutter (a factor affecting community support).
In 2016, the BC Cycling Coalition and partner groups completed a review of the MVA, and submitted a list of proposed improvements reflecting the best practices of progressive jurisdictions to BC Government officials. Proposed changes included a default speed limit of 30 km/h on local streets. We continue to work towards this and many other changes that will ensure the safety and accessibility of all BC road users.
With thanks to Peter Stary, BCCC Board Member