Face
Well-known member
Hedo, hope your recovery is going well. Btw, when you were lobbying for ATVs, it would have been great if you could have also got permission for green plated dirt bikes to use public roads to link trails. Oh well, small steps.
I also agree, those guys are tools! Wrong place, but as others have said, they clearly are interested in having an audience and their 15 minutes.
Just to clarify, engineers do not set road speeds. They are set by Provincial Policy, which if I recall, was last influenced by the oil crisis back in the 70s or 80s. When the new 407 extension and 412 recently opened, I am pretty certain that there were no committees to determine appropriate speed. It was set at 100 because that was policy. Having both ridden and driven those highways and looking at the site lines, ramp radii, lane widths, acceleration and slow down area, etc., I am comfortable saying that the engineered design speed is well above 100. It would have been much better if engineers did set the limit, or at least set discreet monitors to measure and determine the 85th percentile, then use it as the limit. I would bet it would be around 125 or 130.
The process you are referring too is about altering a speed (almost never a request to raise it), which is usually initiated by political complaints. And I would say that most of the parties you referenced at the table (including the police) have a vested interest in seeing the speed lowered. So its no surprise that we are regularly coming back to a road we know only to see the speed lowered.
You also cannot say that police don't lobby. Police are a key part of the "speed kills" public campaign to put the focus on speed. Stats also collected from police reports very often say "speed was a factor". That doesn't refer to how much the speed was over the limit, or rate the relative impact speed may have contributed to the situation. But by simply recording every time speed could have had an influence, can severely skew the results. Anyone who has ever worked with stats knows that how the question is asked determines the results you get. Others have mentioned how police budgets benefit, but the police also benefit by improving their own charge and conviction rates. To put it bluntly, speeding is much easier to enforce and convict in much greater numbers than distracted driving, unsafe lane changes, unsafe left turns, real stunting (as opposed to the HTA172 definition) etc., which all have a far more direct impact to public safety.
I believe I posted this elsewhere in a similar discussion, but in 2002 I witnessed the police armed occupation if the entire Toronto Council Chambers and the 2nd floor gallery around the rotunda. This was an overt act clearly meant to intimidate Council into approving an increase in the police budget while the budgets of all other departments and ABCs (agencies, boards & commissions) of the City were capped at the previous year's rate without indexing. And today Toronto Police have 80% of uniformed officers (and I have to assume 100% of detectives and management) on the sunshine list. Police not only lobby, they are very effective at it.
Police also have some level of control over how they enforce the laws and by-laws passed by politicians. Its interesting how those marijuana outlets only got raided when it became politically desirable to do so. Up until then, it wasn't high on the police radar. Same with road hockey, until the recently by-law change. But it is a shame that we have to rely on luck of the draw and the mood of the officer at the particular time to determine the extent to which ill considered laws get enforced.
I also agree, those guys are tools! Wrong place, but as others have said, they clearly are interested in having an audience and their 15 minutes.
Just to clarify, engineers do not set road speeds. They are set by Provincial Policy, which if I recall, was last influenced by the oil crisis back in the 70s or 80s. When the new 407 extension and 412 recently opened, I am pretty certain that there were no committees to determine appropriate speed. It was set at 100 because that was policy. Having both ridden and driven those highways and looking at the site lines, ramp radii, lane widths, acceleration and slow down area, etc., I am comfortable saying that the engineered design speed is well above 100. It would have been much better if engineers did set the limit, or at least set discreet monitors to measure and determine the 85th percentile, then use it as the limit. I would bet it would be around 125 or 130.
The process you are referring too is about altering a speed (almost never a request to raise it), which is usually initiated by political complaints. And I would say that most of the parties you referenced at the table (including the police) have a vested interest in seeing the speed lowered. So its no surprise that we are regularly coming back to a road we know only to see the speed lowered.
You also cannot say that police don't lobby. Police are a key part of the "speed kills" public campaign to put the focus on speed. Stats also collected from police reports very often say "speed was a factor". That doesn't refer to how much the speed was over the limit, or rate the relative impact speed may have contributed to the situation. But by simply recording every time speed could have had an influence, can severely skew the results. Anyone who has ever worked with stats knows that how the question is asked determines the results you get. Others have mentioned how police budgets benefit, but the police also benefit by improving their own charge and conviction rates. To put it bluntly, speeding is much easier to enforce and convict in much greater numbers than distracted driving, unsafe lane changes, unsafe left turns, real stunting (as opposed to the HTA172 definition) etc., which all have a far more direct impact to public safety.
I believe I posted this elsewhere in a similar discussion, but in 2002 I witnessed the police armed occupation if the entire Toronto Council Chambers and the 2nd floor gallery around the rotunda. This was an overt act clearly meant to intimidate Council into approving an increase in the police budget while the budgets of all other departments and ABCs (agencies, boards & commissions) of the City were capped at the previous year's rate without indexing. And today Toronto Police have 80% of uniformed officers (and I have to assume 100% of detectives and management) on the sunshine list. Police not only lobby, they are very effective at it.
Police also have some level of control over how they enforce the laws and by-laws passed by politicians. Its interesting how those marijuana outlets only got raided when it became politically desirable to do so. Up until then, it wasn't high on the police radar. Same with road hockey, until the recently by-law change. But it is a shame that we have to rely on luck of the draw and the mood of the officer at the particular time to determine the extent to which ill considered laws get enforced.
