A northeast Calgary community is colouring a little outside the lines in order to curb speeders.
Over the weekend, brightly painted polka dots appeared around some intersections along 1 Avenue in Bridgeland.
“Lots of this work has been done in New York, London lots of cities in the U.S.,” Ali McMillan with the Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association said. “The polka dots are a thing because they are bold and easy to put on the road.”
McMillan said community members have been struggling for years to find effective ways to get drivers to slow down and that many people use Bridgeland as a cut-through in order to avoid traffic congestion along Memorial Drive.
“Before you used to stick your head out into the traffic lane and boot it across so that you didn’t get hit by a car,” she said. “The polka dots add visual interest so that drivers going by are like, ‘What’s going on?’ and that causes them to pay more attention to the road.”
While other cities may use designs in intersections to keep drivers on their toes, it’s a first for Calgary.
“This is a one-off for now,” said Tony Churchill, the leader of traffic safety operations with the City of Calgary. “We’re doing a very detailed evaluation using video-based analysis to see what the changes in conflict and other user behaviours are.”
Along with painted polka dots, traffic delineators have also been added to help broaden out the sidewalk.
“As a pedestrian, you do find that you’re cutting the corners because they are so far apart, so I think that this will definitely help,” Bridgeland resident Alena Jenkins said.
McMillan said she’s also received overwhelming support from people on social media.
Listen below: Ali McMillan joins Danielle Smith to discuss the traffic-calming polka dots in Bridgeland.
But others aren’t so sure the traffic-calming measures will do what they’re supposed to.
“With the poles, cyclists may be running into those,” said Laurie Andrews, who is visiting Calgary. “There’s going to be a car and he’s going to sideswipe the poles — those are going to be coming down.”
Both community members and city officials will be watching the intersections over the next year to see if the pilot project should be scrapped or if improvements can be made.
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