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Bob Long has been completely opposed to installation of Speed Tables on Zero
Avenue. Here is my reply to him on November 20, 2004.
Bob, I think we should be guided by professionals who are experts in traffic
enforcement and engineering. I know I'm not an expert in traffic safety, but I
am a "resident" expert on Zero Avenue. I live with the speeding problems down
here now, and I have for the past 14 years. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days
a week. The ongoing stress of this situation has had an incredible negative
impact on my family.
Kim Richter, in front of the whole Translink board and several other Township
Councillors, referred to Zero Avenue as "a speedway".
Will extra signs, as you suggest, make a difference? I went to http://www.icbc.com/Licensing/lic_utility_resman_drivers.html
Have a look at that, and go to Chapter 3 - Signs, Signals and Road Markings.
Look at this one:
This is a road sign/marking. Every driver that gets a license in this province
has to know what this means. You'll see underneath that it says "Double Solid
Line - no passing allowed". There are lots of double solid lines on Zero Avenue,
and every licensed driver on that road should know what that means. However, I
am passed every single day by drivers passing - and speeding - on double solid
lines. They'll even pass on a double solid line with traffic coming towards
them. Georgia Fontaine, another Zero Avenue resident, followed a car one day that
drove up the middle of the road, straddling the double solid line until it
forced another car off the road into the ditch.
On the front page of the Langley Times, Wednesday, November 17, paragraph 4 you
were quoted as saying you found yourself "traveling at 68 kmph". There are speed
signs on Zero Avenue, clearly posted, that say the speed limit on Zero Avenue is
either 50 kmph or 60 kmph. Yet you, an elected official of the Township of
Langley, ignored those signs and chose to exceed the duly posted speed limit -
then publicized it. Why would you then think that other drivers wouldn't do the
same? They do on a daily basis and they have a lot less at stake than you do if
the RCMP stops and tickets you.
Were you at any of the Zero Avenue Safety Committee meetings that were organized
by the Langley Township Engineering department, where we met with the RCMP, ICBC,
Safer Cities, Hamilton & Associates, and members of your engineering staff? Did
you attend the open meeting with Zero Avenue residents? Did you attend the Safer
City meetings with us? At every one of those meetings, we were told by
professionals that Zero Avenue was engineered for traffic going 40 to 50 kmph,
and that's the speed the traffic should be travelling. The only argument was how
to slow the traffic down. ICBC's number one recommendation was to close off the
road.
What would you do if someone drove by YOUR house, where you and your family
live, at 120 kmph? How about if someone came within inches of T-boning your
child, right in front of your eyes, right in front of your house? How about
someone hitting your six year old daughter as she got off the school bus? Howie
Vicksberg could comment about the "road signs" involved in that incident. When a
school bus stops to let off children, it does so with all red lights flashing,
and a "STOP" sign clearly extended from the driver's side ot the bus. The
speeding commuter that hit that little girl chose to ignore all those signs, and
they were very substantial, and very visible.
The people driving this road won't pay attention to a sign. They want to get
from "A" to "B" as fast as they can, and that's the bottom line. The majority of
them live in Abbotsford and Surrey, not in Langley.
Zero Avenue was not meant to be a commuter road. It's built, as you know, for
traffic travelling 40 to 50 kmph. Your Engineering Department has told you that.
Hamilton and Associates told you that. Why would you then advocate that traffic
travel faster than that? A "reasonable" speed on Zero Avenue is the speed the
road was designed for - and that is 40 to 50 kmph. Just because you want a
higher speed doesn't make it "reasonable".
Speed tables are already slowing drivers down on Zero Avenue. Someone that works
down here, but doesn't live here, phoned me last night and said that for the
first time in years, she felt like she was driving on a "normal street" again
instead of a freeway.
Are they the perfect solution? Who knows, but they're the only one we've got.
Increased policing doesn't work. The RCMP have told Council that. The RCMP
officer down here stopping cars the other day said the same thing. I've watched
it happen. As soon as you get past a patrol car, the traffic speeds back up - in
fact, goes faster to "make up time" - and the cars start passing again. By the
way, four of the cars he ticketed, in one hour, were going 120 kmph or faster.
Would an extra sign slow them down? What would they consider a "reasonable
speed"?
Could Zero Avenue become a major arterial connector? Sure. But at what cost?
Almost every house, barn, greenhouse, chicken barn, horse arena on Zero Avenue,
including the Abbotsford, Langley and Surrey portions - are built within two
hundred feet of the road. You would need at least 200 feet to put in four lanes,
dividers and a local access road. Maybe more - Colin Wright would know better
than I. That means, in the Langley section alone, you'd be looking at roughly
$50 million in expropriation charges as every structure was torn down.
Have a look at the aerial photos of Zero Avenue in your Engineering Department,
as I did. Since the road bed is all peat, that would be another enormous cost.
Let's say it cost $10 million to put in those four lanes plus rural access road
- Colin Wright would know better than I, it's probably far more. But let's say
that it costs $10 million for road construction. That would put the approximate
cost of that 27 km of road at a minimum of $60 million. And right now, for the
Langley portion, it's being used by 3,000 drivers. Since it's not Translink,
Langley would have to pay that alone.
If you divide $60 million by 3000 cars, you get a cost of $20,000 per car. Would
Township of Langley residents be willing to pay that cost, to facilitate
commuters from outside the Township, so they could go faster? What happens when
those drivers get to either end of Langley's section of the road? Neither
Abbotsford nor Surrey have any intention of building up Zero Avenue. However,
the federal government has every intention of greatly expanding its border
infrastructure at either end of Zero Avenue. Where does the traffic go then?
I have sat in on several different traffic studies in Langley. In every one of
those, the east-west conundrum has come up. In every meeting, people asked, "why
is nothing being done to upgrade 16th Avenue?" If you want to truly help move
the commuters from "A" to "B", you should be advocating that 16th Avenue be made
four lanes. These are Translink commuters, and they should be commuting on a
Translink sponsored, Translink funded road, not an underbuilt, undersized,
unfunded rural road.
16th Avenue has been identified for 25 years as a major arterial road in the
Translink system. It is far past time that 16th Avenue was expanded and made
safe for the traffic that is using it now, and in the future. Translink will pay
half the expense. The cost of expropriation of land would be a fraction of that
on Zero Avenue. Surrey plans to have its section of 16th Avenue widened to 4
lanes within the next five years. Abbotsford is pushing King Road/16th Avenue
through to Abbotsford Airport and eventually on to Highway One. Talk to their
Engineering Departments - 16th Avenue is going to be the major east/west route
in the southern end for both those municipalities. Why then are we not doing the
same in Langley?
Almost every death on 16th Avenue has been at an intersection. If you know that,
and the residents on 16th Avenue know that, why hasn't there been delegation
after delegation of those residents at Council asking for fully synchronized
traffic lights at every intersection on 16th Avenue? If I was a resident of 16th
Avenue, that would be my number one priority.
Status quo on Zero Avenue isn't an option. You can't continue to allow high
speed traffic on a road designed for 50 kmph. You have a liability issue here.
Even encouraging drivers to travel at a speed higher than the posted speed could
leave you - and the Township - open to legal action if someone gets hurt. Zero
Avenue is either a rural road, with a rural road speed limit, or it's a four
lane highway. You can't have it both ways, and you can't afford the four lane
highway.
The Hamilton and Associates report on Zero Avenue was released in 2002. If
Township Council had adopted the recommended solution of "speed tables" at that
time, the cost to the Township would have been $20,334 with ICBC paying the
balance of $59,666. (Township Council meeting, May 6, 2002, Page 3). Instead,
Council voted to install $75,000 worth of "radar pullouts" which are used as
right hand passing lanes by commuters. Now the community is "outraged" that
Council has spent $110,000 on speed tables on Zero Avenue..
What if the speed tables had been installed in 2002? Would this have happened?
"Copyright Chilliwack Times 2003)
mckay@langleyadvance.com.
Excessive speed and poor driving conditions combined to claim a life this
Christmas season.
Chilliwack's Colton James Esau, 24, was killed on Zero Avenue in Langley on
Wednesday morning, when the 2001 Toyota Echo he was driving smashed into an
eastbound grader."
Emergency personnel reported that he was going 168 kmph at the time of the
collision, and he was in the wrong lane of traffic..
Could he have driven that fast with speed tables in place? I'm not a traffic
engineer, but I doubt it. Would a sign have slowed him down? There were already
signs there, clearly visible, saying the speed limit was 60 kmph. He didn't obey
them.
Yes, he shouldn't have been driving that fast on Zero Avenue. I guess the real
question is, on that day in December, 2003, eighteen months after safety
recommendations went to Council - should he have been able to.
Trudy Handel
"Bob Long" <bob@BobLong.ca>
Nov 19, 2004 09:26 AM
Please respond to "Bob Long"
To: <Trudy_Handel@bcit.ca>
cc: <mayor&councillors@tol.bc.ca>, <cwright@tol.bc.ca>, <mbakken@tol.bc.ca>,
<bob@boblong.ca>
Subject: zero ave crash
Trudy wrote:
Tonight there was a very serious accident on Zero Avenue. A young man
in a Honda pulled out to pass a string of cars, on a double yellow line,
as people do every day on this road, and hit two cars head on. The male
driver in the Honda and two women in another car have been very
seriously injured and were airlifted to hospital. I hope they make it.
Thank you so much for voting to put speed tables on Zero Avenue.
Hopefully this is the last horrible accident we will have there.
Bob Long writes:
Trudy, do you really thing that speed tables would have prevented this accident?
What proximity to the proposed humps did the accident occur? Perhaps if the
speed limit were more reasonable the driver would NOT have crossed a double line
to overtake the other cars? OR if the driver was an "excessive speeder" perhaps
nothing would have stopped him.
I have been trying to convince The Township to address the issue at the source
by embarking on a campaign against EXCESSIVE SPEED with signs like the one
attached AND to hire more police officers dedicated to speed enforcement (using
funds from the Province from traffic violations)
I first brought this initiative to council in 2002 yet today there are NO signs
on Zero Avenue to advise of:
Slippery conditions
Do Not Pass
Watch for Farm Vehicles
Caution - Horse traffic
Reduce speed at night
These signs would not be expensive to install and if the speed limit was set at
a reasonable speed, motorists would be less likely to pass. If we do not address
the issue of excessive speed, then the humps will only exasperate an already
deadly situation on Zero Avenue.
Bob Long
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