GUELPH/ERAMOSA – As early as this summer, speed humps will be installed to slow traffic on two Guelph/Eramosa roads.
Three are set to be installed on Conservation Road between Highway 6 and Wellington Road 38, about a kilometre north-west of Guelph.
An additional two or three will be installed on MacLennan Street, a residential road in Rockwood’s south end.
The speed humps are part of a pilot project that was approved on July 8. The township allocated $44,000 for the project in this year’s capital budget. At approximately $10,000 per speed hump, the pilot project is set to cost between $50,000 and $60,0000.
Mayor Chris White said reserves would be used to make up the difference between the allocated amount and the total cost.
The speed humps will be between seven and 8.5 centimeters high and relatively wide, meaning they won’t have a sharp bump and will be easier on vehicles such as snowplows and ambulances.
But they’ll be steep enough that “you won’t be speeding after you go over a hump,” said councillor Mark Bouwmeester.
They’ll be installed with between 80 and 150 metres between them and placed a safe distance from driveways and intersections, said public works director Harry Niemi.
“If we are doing a pilot, we want to try to get it right,” White said.
“If you put three, it will give a good indication – if it works here, then maybe there’s lots of opportunities” for speed humps elsewhere in the township, he noted.
White said Conservation and MacLennan are good places to start.
He describes Conservation Road, with farm fields on one side and a small neighbourhood on the other, as a “quasi-rural road which is a pass-through with people just zipping from Fergus over to Guelph.
“And then you’ve got MacLennan, which is a school route and part of an urban area,” he said.
Two or three speed humps are set to be installed on MacLennan Street in Rockwood as part of Guelph/Eramosa’s new speed hump pilot project. Image from Google maps
“So it’s a good balance, to see how they are going to work. I think it’s a great pilot.”
White noted people shouldn’t expect the speed humps to end up “going in everywhere – we want to make sure there are certain parameters.
“We are piloting to see where it might fit, as long as there’s certain criteria.”
Niemi said the township had counters out monitoring traffic on Conservation Road in late June, “in a strategic location.
“And once the humps are installed, I would put them out again and see the impact that it has on the speed,” he said.
Conservation Road was the highest priority for the speed humps because “there was some near-miss incidents” there and measures including radar sensors and delineators have not done enough to slow traffic.
“There’s a hill in the middle of it … a pile of driveways, people can’t back out,” White said. “There’s been concerns on this road since the get-go.”
“We’ve done a lot of stuff on Conservation Road to try and get people to slow down,” added councillor Corey Woods.
“We lowered the speed on the hill from 50 to 40, we’ve put in the delineators, we’ve also put up the flashing speed sign. There’s still speeding on that road” Woods said.
“I 100% agree that this is a good road for this pilot project … I just don’t want us to forget about Cross Creek.”
Cross Creek Boulevard is a windy residential road, with no sidewalks, about half a kilometre south of Conservation Road, off Highway 6.
“Cross Creek has a number of speeding issues,” Woods said, and its not a candidate for delineators because people park on the road.
“You can’t see, you come around a bend, a mom with a baby carriage or whatever.
“I kinda thought we had Cross Creek lined up for the pilot project for speed humps,” Woods said.
Niemi assured he wouldn’t lose sight of Cross Creek Boulevard, and explained it was not selected for the pilot because it “is starting to show its age.”
It will likely need resurfacing soon, and “possibly a little bit of drainage improvements,” Niemi said.
“It’s not a road we are patching but it is becoming a rougher road.
“So I hesitated to spend a chunk of money … then to have it ripped out and redone.
“So depending on how far we are looking at resurfacing – that would be the time to do it, if not before.”
