Resident aims to slow down speeding, cut-through traffic in SoHo

Andrew Roberts wants to put the brakes on what he says is an increase in speeding traffic outside his front door. 

Roberts lives on Waterloo Street south of Horton Street. The residential street has a 40 km/h speed limit but Roberts said this is being increasingly ignored. He suspects more drivers are cutting through the SoHo neighbourhood to avoid lane closures on Wellington Street, where work is underway to prepare the street for bus rapid transit. 

Also, he's seeing more construction-related traffic heading to the large construction projects at the former Victoria Hospital site where Wellington and Colborne Street cross South Street. 

"I would say that the traffic has gotten about 25 per cent worse in the last year," said Roberts, who's lived on Waterloo for three years. 

"I think there needs to be some [traffic calming] measures done and our planning committee needs to come and sit down and talk with the residents. I've seen people chasing people to get into physical altercations with them over aggressive driving and speeding."

Calls to add traffic calming measures on city streets drives a lot of complaints to city staff and councillors. The city has a process for evaluating these requests: Residents seeking speed bumps on their street and other traffic calming measures have to get 10 signatures from their neighbours. The city also requires a majority of residents in the area to indicate on a survey that they want the traffic-calming measures.

A resident of Aldersbrook Road, in the city's north west, spoke to CBC News in July about a similar problem on his street and was left feeling frustrated about the process. 

CBC News reached out to the city about Roberts's concerns.

In a statement Garfield Dales, division manager of the city's transportation planning and design department, said a traffic study of the stretch of Waterloo Street, between Horton and Simcoe Street, didn't suggest that speeding was a problem there. 

"Our last review in 2022 didn't indicate that speed cushions would provide a net benefit, as the measured average traffic speeds were at or less than the 40 km/hour posted speed limit," he said.

"There is an established process in place to review and consider requests for traffic calming measures in neighbourhoods," he said. "It's a resident driven process that can result in the installation of speed cushions to help manage traffic speeds."

He said residents can submit their requests to: trafficcalming@london.ca. 

Roberts believes the city's traffic study had a skewed result because it happened in winter. Also, traffic has grown since 2022.

"The information wasn't shared with us and it was done at the wrong time," said Roberts. 

Roberts said he won't give up his push to slow down traffic. He will pursue petitioning the city to add a stop sign to slow down north-south traffic at the Waterloo-Simcoe intersection. He'd also like to see a traffic light at the Horton-Waterloo intersection.