Abstract Manager

CIMA was retained by the Regional Municipality of Halton to develop a process for selecting candidate locations for Community Safety Zones (CSZs). Municipalities may designate a section of a road a CSZ under the province of Ontario's Highway Traffic Act. Within Community Safety Zones, speeding fines are doubled and Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) may be implemented. 

CIMA conducted an industry scan to determine other municipalities' experience with CSZs.  CSZs are widely used and are primarily selected based on land use, specifically land uses that would indicate the presence of vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists) such as schools, parks and community centres, followed by historical collision and speed data. The overall experience that municipalities have had with CSZs is mixed; however, this needs to be understood in the content of whether the municipality has deployed ASE in conjunction with the CSZs. CSZs without ASE tend to be ineffective and do not result in a marked change in driver behaviour as their effectiveness relies on police actively enforcing speeds. CSZs, when combined with ASE, tend to be effective.

Based on the above, CIMA developed and applied a network screening approach to selecting and prioritizing CSZs within the Region that is risk based and focussed on areas in the Region where there are land uses present that indicate the presence of vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists). A total of 35 locations were selected based on this initial task, being locations were land use indicated the likely presence of vulnerable road users.

For the short-listed segments, CIMA identified risk factors that were identified as being associated with a higher likelihood of fatal and non-fatal injury collisions. Among the risk factors considered was variables related to traffic volume, speed, roadway characteristics and transit. On the basis of the review the following risk factors, if present on the road segments reviewed, were identified:

• AADT greater than or equal to 20,000 vehicles
• 5 or more lane cross section
• Presence of bus stops
• Daily truck volumes greater than 250 vehicles
• 85^th percentile speed non-compliance

Based on the above, the short-listed locations were then ranked based on the presence of the above risk factors together with the locations overall collision performance.  

The above approach provided the Region with an objective and defensible approach to identifying and then ranking suitable locations for CSZs. The Region is expected to implement ASE along segments where CSZs have been implemented.