Traffic safety in Tuscany – or lack thereof – seems to be a recurring and underlying theme in our community. Last week, we had three reported incidents (2 anecdotally and 1 to police and political officials) of pedestrians who were inside crosswalks in our school zones and had cars go through the crosswalks without slowing down or showing any sign that they noticed the pedestrians in the middle of crossing. A dangerous and terrifying practice because, even if the majority of drivers are doing the right thing, the consequences of the few who are driving this way could be catastrophic. This issue is multi-leveled, requires multiple solutions and, most importantly, it requires a community to band and work together to address the community’s unique needs with sustainable solutions. So, instead of focusing on blaming, I thought I’d just jot down some thoughts and comments I’ve heard about driving and walking in Tuscany from residents in our community and then ask that you share yours to help bring a broader understanding to this issue in our community.
A Driver’s Perspective Around Tuscany Schools
- I love my car. It’s almost like being in my living room – my coffee, my phone and my favorite music. The kids and I love belting out our favorite tunes as we’re heading to school.
- The wide-open roads make it easy to see up ahead but my speed creeps up without me even knowing it.
- I’m stopped at a crosswalk and I’m frustrated because I don’t know if the people visiting on the corners are going to cross or not. Do they even know I’m waiting for them to cross?
- My heart’s beating like mad. Even though I’m doing 30, watching crosswalks, school buses and all the parked cars for kids, I still barely had time to see the man and his child bolting across the street to get to the front doors of the school.
- 50km/hr is the legal speed limit before 8am. Why am I getting all the dirty looks?
- I want to live in a safe community.
A Pedestrian’s Perspective Around Tuscany Schools
- I love walking in my neighbourhood. I get to say hello to neighbours, take in the sights in our community and walk with my kids to school.
- I’m worried about crossing the street. I can see the car coming really fast and I’m not sure if he’ll see me if I step out from behind the car parked in front of the crosswalk.
- I’m rushing my kids to school and it’s a long way for little legs to the next crosswalk. Cars should be going slowly so I’ll cross right here and get them in before they’re late.
- I spent the morning crying. My kids and I were almost hit as we were in the crosswalk. What’s so important that drivers can’t slow down and watch where they’re going?
- I decided to drive to school today even though it’s so congested I can barely park. I just don’t feel safe walking my kids to school.
- I want to live in a safe community.
Share your driving and pedestrian perspectives with your community. While here, be sure to do the survey “Are you worried enough about traffic safety in Tuscany to do something about it?” located on the righthand navigation.
Safe Journeying,
Michelle
The police should pay more attention to our residential streets and less sitting clocking motorists doing 7 over on Crowchild (easy prey). Most of our collisons happen within 7km of our homes. I shudder when I have to cross Tuscany Way to walk the puppies. The police would better serve us if they just sat and watched the amount of drivers that fail to yield the right-of-way at stop signs, crosswalks and yield signs and then prosecute the offenders. Let’s all start taking registration numbers of the offenders and report them to the CPS. On the other hand let’s get rid of the 4-ways and the over use of traffic lights in this city and introduce more roundabouts, make better merge lanes, it will make our drivers think a little more about what they are doing, and the thought of just sitting at 4-Way at 4 in the morning for no real reason, is just waste of gas, brake shoes and time. Infrastructure guys… more roundabouts, less traffic lights please, if we all use them correctly they work, the Brits use them and have one of the safest highway systems in the world and there’s a heck of a lot more of them than us stacked into an area smaller than Alberta.
Easy prey for police for people doing 7 over on Crowchild unfortunately is not limited to Crowchild. They could as easily fill their quota around the corner on Tuscany Blvd. with all the people doing 60-80 in the 50 or at the top of the hill on Tuscany Hill with all the people driving UP the hill doing 80 in the 60.
Just not enough police.
I’ve been to countries where there is police on every block corner. Traffic speeding isn’t an issue there.
I also agree on roundabouts and the like. CoC is focused on traffic control, not traffic management. Any engineer who puts a red light on a highway deserves to be fired.
Yes, it is easy to criticize the design of our road system and the lack of police presence. I agree with Eric and John. Is there anything we can do about it? Not really, they’re not going to re-design our road system any time soon.
More police would be nice. Most people just don’t respect the posted speed limits. It is frustrating to say the least.
It IS true that the school zone speed limit only begins at 8:00am but come on people, use common sense: you should drive according to the conditions/situation. Just because the posted speed limit is 50 km/h doesn’t mean you have the right to drive that fast. Be mindful of your surroundings and use common sense.
I live just at Tuscany Springs Blvd, near start of Tanglewood, at the bottom of a hill and just around a bend, and I have had these issues on-going….
School Bus for this area regularly exceeds the posted limit, and I have seen this driver drop kids off at the park, turn around and come blasting back through the same area, minutes later going in excess of 50K!!!!! This bus often
barrels by the house.
I have had folks so impatient for me to back out of my driveway, that they have ACTUALLY PASSED ME ON THE RIGHT GOING UP OVER THE SIDEWALK!!!!
I have been nearly side-swiped because folks can’t even wait for me to back out and get in gear before slamming past….
I am often in fear of being rear-ended just turning into my driveway…
People —WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??? WE ARE TALKING A COUPLE SECONDS, HERE!!!!
I don’t even have children but am very aware of the lack of courtesy people display while driving, by this, I mean speeding up and down Tuscany Blvd. I rent here in the community and we are looking to purchase right away, however buying on a main street is completely out of the question due to the drivers i have seen. It is insane, all i want to do is honk at them and let them know how inappropriate is to disrespect the entire community essentially but it’s kind of hard to get there attention when they are barreling down the street at 65 km/hr! And it is true, police need to spend less time on Crowchild and more time in communities.
I think that the real issues are with the attitude of the drivers, lack of knowledge about driving practicves and the design of the community road system. For instance, the large curve at the entrance is too sharp and the lanes too narrow given that volume of traffic. The main Boulevards are too narrow. When some large vehicles park they protrude into the narrow roadway. I could go on …
With that being said, I also believe that there are a small number of people causing the majority of the problems. I would suggest that when it comes to policing the issue we need to provide contant and ongoing education about the rules of the road and the implications of intentionally disobeying the rules.
I think that we can all agree … we need more police. However, are you willing to pay significantly more on your taxes to have more officers patrolling our streets? Don’t get me wrong I do believe that we need more police! I would also suggest that Tuscany / Tuscarora donate the land so that the Police Service could have a station in Tuscany. This would cause a considerable deterrent to crime, traffic and safety issues in Tuscany. When I lived in Edmonton I noticed that E.P.S. has community stations. It seemed as though crime was non-existent near these stations. Just a thought …
Finally, some people need to review the driver handbook that they read before obtining their licence. I have observed several cases where people are backing their vehicle into major roadways. Mark my words … there will be an accident as a result of this!
I have to agree with the above. I do not live on a main road, I live in Tuscany Springs Circle and even there people are speeding up and down my street and even when the play ground zone is in effect. It is extremely unsafe. I have found my self going the speed limit on Tuscany Blvd and on Tuscany Valley View Road and have had the driver behind me get frustrated that I am not going faster and have them pass me and even go into the opposing traffic lane. Just last Evening (March 8th) I was stopped at a traffic light and almost witnessed a man walking his two dogs in a cross walk be struck by van of which the driver was talking on their cellphone. This driver was within inches of hitting this person. Does it have to take a serious accident to make people aware of their driving behaviour? Since living in the community I have seen two accidents where police, fire and ems had to be called as speed or driver irresponsibility were the factors. Luckily no one was seriously hurt or killed and just to point out these both happened in good weather conditions. I would like to see an increase in police in our community as spring is fast approaching and with more and more people using Tuscany to access the twelve mile cooley road. I just want saftey in the community and those drivers who are doing this to realize that this behaviour is dangerous and they should think of the consequences before getting behind the wheel.
At the intersection of Tuscany Hill and Tuscany Meadows Drive there is a pathway that meets the road. A gate with bright lights shining on it greets pedestrians as they come or go on that path. The problem is the light also shines directly into drivers eyes as they approach the right hand turn onto Tuscany meadows drive.
Lets get that light turned away from traffic.
Try that corner at dusk and have a look. In a low vehicle the light is blinding.
We need to start looking more into traffic calming methods to slow traffic in this community. One of the issues is that nice straight and wide roads look great but really do promote speeding. People will drive at the speed they feel safe at. We need more roundabouts and speed bumps.
In regards to pedestrian and child safety. I come from a part of the world where motorists did not have to and would not stop for pedestrians. I teach my children to fear cars and think the prevailing attitudes here in Calgary in regards to pedestrians are dangerous. All park zones and pedestrian right of way does is create a false sense of security. It might work in a small town (and most of us Calgarians seem to come from small towns) but this is a major city of over 1,000,000 now.
Park zones also cause more problems than solve in my opinion. Most people think they are just speed traps and no other city I have seen even has them…
We need more traffic calming… We’re smarter than just having speed traps that don’t work folks!
Traffic
Something has to be done about the speeders and parking at the schools….
I have spoken to our ‘elected officials’ the community association members, school principals, trustees and superindendant, the police, got the herald to write an article, sent out flyers, and sent many emails
NONE of them has done a thing… most don’t even return emails.
We need to keep ‘bugging’ them before somebody is hurt or worse….
Sincerely,
Duan ePage
Hi Duane,
Thanks for the comment. Thought I’d follow up with some information regarding the officials you mentioned.
The Tuscany Community Association is working on traffic safety and has a committee dedicated to this issue. As a concerned resident, I invite you to participate in this committee (you don’t need to be a Board member) so that you can continue to help address the traffic and safety concerns you’ve mentioned. At present, we have one person Chairing the committe and have not had any other community members offer to assist.
You might be interested to know that Tuscany School is spearheading a Safe Routes to School program that looks at traffic and safety as a whole issue and involves people on mulitiple levels in order to help make the program a success. The three goals of the program at to 1) reduce traffic around schools, 2) provide programs and education around viable alternatives to driving and 3) provide education and programs promoting safe driving and pedestrian practices. Our MLA, Alderman, school principals of both schools, representative for the new middle school, CBE, City (Transportation), AI, TCA, parents and students are all taking the time to be involved and make a difference.
As education and awareness grow in this large community of ours, we’ll see the benefits of programs such as these.
As a side note, school zone/playground zone times are still be reviewed for change by our government.
Just thought you’d like to hear some good news and I hope you’ll find the time to join the effort, as well as many of our Tuscany residents. With regarding to not returning emails from the CA’s perspective, I know you and I have corresponded via the Tuscany Sun route. I’m sorry if you haven’t received a response from us in other areas.
Finally, I don’t think we spend enough time recognizing all the people doing things consistently well in our community. I notice more great drivers and pedestrians that I do poor each day I am in our community. The poor drivers just make a lot of impact. Thanks for the daily efforts to drive well, make alternative choices and support our community all of you out in Tuscany-land.
Thanks for caring!
Michelle
Thanks for the reply Michelle,
1. Committee help,
I have offered to help several times .. never heard back
2. Contacting the board members
All the emails we have for them do NOT work.. do you know anything about this.. there is no phone no. I can find also.
We’ll keep plugging away
Duane Page
As a concerned resident, I invite you to participate in this committee (you don’t need to be a Board member) so that you can continue to help address the traffic and safety concerns you’ve mentioned. At present, we have one person Chairing the committe and have not had any other community members offer to assist
I guess I’m in the minority here. I believe the speed limit on stretch of Tuscany Blvd from Stoney Trail to Tuscany Way should be 60km/h. Its the main road into the community, no houses front directly onto the road, the playgrounds are fenced off and there are sufficient traffic lights for crossing.
For the rest of the community, 50km/h is reasonable. Although I don’t agree with any traffic calming such as speed bumps. What we need is more police presence to ticket the drivers that continuously speed (remember the vast majority of us don’t speed).
Thanks