People speed on Scott and Savoline, that’s no news to residents living on these streets. What we, residents, cannot figure out is why traffic calming devices were not built on these roads.  Afterall, if you design a wide road like Scott (or Savoline) then (some) people will drive on them like they’re on Autobahn. 

These ideas are strictly for residential streets (like Scott and Savoline).  I don’t know which ones of these I support, but here are some ideas I have seen in cities I’ve lived in (I lived in 8 different cities in a 7 year period after my wife & I first got married):

• Bends that are safe at speed limit  (image from Seattle)
  
  
• Median with trees. Southern MD and Washington, DC (affluent areas) does this really well. I lived in a community of small townhomes in Gaithersburg, MD and even there the median had three rows of trees. This also prevents people from passing from beyond the solid yellow line.
  This shot is from Maryland (this was done on an old road, so the trees in the median aren’t grown yet):
  

• Create a physical barrier after a few parking spots. For Scott & Savoline that means people won’t be able to pass from the right.  Yet another from MD:
   
• Traffic circle (again, I am told by people that it works. I hated them in DC and Maryland and VA did not have them. Seattle neighbourhoods do have these though and there they were okay. This picture is from Seattle:
   
  
• Lonnnngg speed bumps (not conventional ones). Here’s a picture from Bellevue, WA of a speed bump that does nothing at reasonable speed but does hurt at a higher speed:
  

• Raised intersection that work as the bullet above. This is a raised intersection from Gaithersburg, MD. It also works fine at normal speed (costs < $15K to build):
  

• Finally, do not create long parallel neighbourhood roads that become bypasses for real streets (eg. people taking Scott Blvd to avoid driving on Bronte / Tremaine and Derry). These streets should be for people living in the community, not for people going from one major street to another.

These are some ideas.  Not all will work here. But they should be considered and implemented so builders like Mattamy or Fieldgate builds them when they first construct residential roads (so the Town doesn’t have to build them later). 

So I am driving down on Scott Blvd at 50km/hr from the Main Street towards HVE with my family last week after thanksgiving dinner when I noticed a black Acura TL tailgating me.

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So I am walking with my boys, aged 5 and 2 (pretty young).  We get to Scott.  I am teaching my 5 year old how to cross the road.  We look right, no car.  We look left, a car.  We wait.  Fortunately the driver on the left sees children and stopped and waives us to go.

We start walking.  We are perhaps a quarter way through when an SUV turns into Scott and decides to fly through it.  We are about half-way through when I realize that the driver perhaps does not intend to stop.  I keep trying to make eye contact with the driver to determine her intentions but she ignores me. Eventually she maintains her speed and drives around us (and “us” includes a 5 year old and a 2 year old).

What’s with people?  Are we really in such a hurry that we won’t even stop for children who are already half-way through crossing a road?  Another Milton Blogger, Mike Cluett, just complained about aggressive driving.  Just last month someone wrote a letter in Milton Canadian Champion urging drivers to slow down when they drive through her community.  Would the extra 15 seconds it would have taken for my kids and I to cross the street really so valuable that you figured it was better to risk their lives instead?