While the City of Ottawa has received a batch of temporary school-zone signs intended to be installed following the provincial ban on speed cameras, installation may be delayed since the signs sent from the province are too large to fit on the city’s standard poles.
Manufactured by the Ontario government, the huge signs warn drivers of increased fines when speeding in school zones. More than a week after
speed cameras across the province were turned off
, the signs are being delivered as an
alternative speed-reduction measure
promised by the province.
While the signs have officially been shipped to Ottawa, an installation timeline is up in the air as the city figures out a way to install the 12-foot-tall “highway-sized, giant signs” in school zones across the city, said Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney.
And these newly delivered signs also won’t stay forever — they’ll only be temporary as the province works on a design for the final signs, which will include large, flashing beacons. The province is also working on regulation changes for the new signs.
But with these new speed-reduction measures set to be implemented, Tierney said he’s heard from many people who are concerned that increased signage won’t work to slow people down, no matter how large or flashy the signs may be.
“Our data shows signs don’t do anything, so they’ll change a pattern for maybe a little bit, then people will go right back to it,” said Tierney, who also chairs the public works and infrastructure committee.
“You just have to laugh,” Tierney said of the signs with beacons. “It’s like, wait a minute, hold on. Is this a Vegas sign? Yeah, like that’s going to stop everybody dead in their tracks.”
The provincial Ministry of Transportation did not respond in time for comment when asked about the exact dimensions of the signs and why they have to be so much bigger than the school-zone signs currently in place across the city.
Tierney confirmed the signs delivered to Ottawa are bilingual, quelling previous concerns about further delays, since the English-only concepts for the signs wouldn’t work in Ottawa given its designation as a bilingual city.
In addition to the signs, the city is also looking into other traffic-calming measures to reduce speeds in school zones since speed cameras have been turned off. Police enforcement has increased in areas across the city where the cameras were previously located, Tierney said.
But when it comes to implementing other speed-reduction measures such as speed bumps, Tierney said the city is running into a few road blocks.
For one, funding from the province remains uncertain. While the Ontario government has promised municipalities $42 million as part of the Road Safety Initiatives Fund, Tierney said many questions remain around how this money will be allocated.
“The things that we’re supposed to pay for, like speed bumps, we don’t have the money now,” Tierney said. “We’re waiting for the province to make us whole and give us money.”
The second challenge the city is encountering is that construction season is now over as winter approaches. Even if the city had funding to install speed cushions in school zones, construction would not be able to start until the spring.
Ottawa’s automated enforcement program has collected $97.5 million in fines since it launched as a pilot program in 2020, according to a previous memo to city council from public works general manager Alain Gonthier. Of that, the city has remitted $18.3 million to the province as the mandatory victim fine surcharge. Another $37.6 million has been used to operate and administer the program, and $41.6 million has been allocated to the city’s reserve for road safety initiatives.
Tierney added the city is currently watching eight zones previously home to speed cameras to monitor if average speeds have increased since the cameras were shut off. That data will be available within the next month, he said.
In the meantime, it’s still unclear which alternatives the city is considering to install these massive signs in the 72 designated school zones across the city.
This isn’t the first time Ottawa has run into challenges with the size of road signs. In 2019, the city faced issues expanding its new speed camera program, with many central communities initially not considered for photo radar because of questions around
whether the streetscape could handle the size of the large bilingual community safety zone signs
. The bilingual signs were more than double the width of speed limit signs when mounted side-by-side.
The province subsequently made changes
allowing the city to stack the signs on a single post
, rather than mounting them side-by-side using two posts.
Looking back at the start of the project, Tierney said he’s frustrated that the cameras have not only now been shut off, but will soon be removed entirely.
“The fact that we’re taking them all down is even more concerning, because that means we’d have to start the entire program again after many years of success,” he said.
