Traffic calming

In July 2021, City Council approved a staff recommendation to reduce speed limits on local neighbourhood roads to 40km/h. Transportation Engineering staff have implemented these changes as per the Ontario Traffic Manual. All speed limit changes can be seen on the online mapping tool.

Due to the impact of these reduced speed limit changes on neighbourhood roads, we have put a temporary pause on all traffic calming requests. Data collection for traffic calming requests will resume in 2024. Due to the volume of requests in queue, it will take some time to complete the reviews. New requests for traffic calming are still being accepted and will be reviewed once data collection restarts in 2024.

To determine if a street is eligible for traffic calming, we look at 5 different factors.

Is the street a local or collector?

Local streets have low vehicle volumes and are used primarily for residential access (like Atto Drive or Deerpath Drive). Collector streets have low to mid vehicle volumes (like Rickson Avenue or Westmount Road) and are used primarily to take vehicles from local streets to arterial streets with high vehicle volumes (like Gordon Street or Edinburgh Road). Both local and collector streets are eligible for traffic calming. Arterial streets are not eligible for traffic calming but may be reviewed under the Community Road Safety Strategy (CRSS).

Is there more than one travel lane in each direction?

Streets that have more than 2 travel lanes in each direction are not eligible for traffic calming.

Is the speed limit 50 kilometres per hour (km/h) or lower?

Streets with a speed limit greater than 50 km/h are not eligible for traffic calming.

How many vehicles travel on the street?

For local streets, there needs to be a minimum of 900 vehicles travelling on the street a day and 2,000 vehicles for a collector street. Streets with less than this do not qualify for traffic calming.

These numbers do not apply to streets in a designated school or senior safety zone.

How fast are vehicles travelling on the street?

For both local and collector streets, the 85th percentile speed needs to be 5 km/h over the speed limit to be eligible. The 85th percentile speed is the speed at which 85 percent of vehicles are travelling at or below. This is an industry standard used by transportation professionals across Canada.

How do you know how fast cars are travelling?

We review traffic data that measures how fast vehicles are travelling as well as how many vehicles travel down the street.

The traffic data is collected with Automatic Traffic Recorders (ATRs), black tubes laid across the middle of the street, which are out on the street for a total of seven (7) days collecting data 24 hours a day.

If there isn’t any available traffic data for your street, we will schedule traffic data collection.

If your street is eligible for traffic calming, it will be placed on a list based on a prioritization ranking. Factors used to prioritize streets include speed, volume, and historical collision data. For the full list of prioritization criteria please see Prioritization Rankings on page 9 of the Traffic Calming Policy.

We cannot guarantee that traffic calming will be installed in the same year as the request is approved. Once your street is eligible you will be assigned a ranking and the timing of installation will depend on available budget. While you are waiting for traffic calming, your street will be reviewed for other road safety strategies that can be implemented through the Community Road Safety Strategy.

If your street isn’t eligible for traffic calming, we’ll review it under the Community Road Safety Strategy (CRSS). Some strategies that can be found in the CRSS to address speeding include speed limit reviews, ‘please slow down’ lawn signs, and radar speed display boards.