Land Use Planning Measures Promoting Road Safety

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Editor’s note – In this article written for TAC News, Catherine Berthod, Engineer and Urban Planner with le ministère des Transports, de la Mobilité durable et de l’Électrification des transports du Québec, provides an account of land use planning measures promoting road safety in small communities. 

Presented at the 2016 Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) Conference & Exhibition, this paper was part of the New Research and Developments in Road Safety technical session, organized by the Road Safety Standing Committee. 

Even if globally, in Canada, the number of road victims is decreasing, additional efforts to implement innovative and efficient strategies to improve the road safety record must continue. In that context, the integration of transportation land use measures which can be adopted by municipalities can be explored. In Québec, several urban planning documents contain excellent examples.

Measures aimed at promoting safety on the road network include the planning of ground transportation; the delimitation and usage of urbanization perimeters; the localization of growth areas and of major projects generating movements; land occupation density; lot subdivision rules along highways (for example the minimal width of a lot); access standards (including the maximum number by lot) or term and conditions for delivering planning permits. 

The type of activities resulting from these land occupation density choices determine traffic volume and conditions on the road network, travel modes, as well as the frequency of accesses and intersections with the adjacent road, which has an impact on road safety.

The consideration of road safety issues in land use planning presents major challenges mainly because of the number of parties involved, the distribution of jurisdictions among them and their competing interests. The province of Québec has over 1,100 local municipalities, where two thirds have less than 2,000 residents and only 10 cities have more than 100,000 residents. Many municipalities may fulfill their urban planning responsibilities along the road network, which is largely managed by le ministère des Transports, de la Mobilité durable et de l’Électrification des transports.

Municipalities have taken road safety in consideration when preparing their land use plan, and demonstrating that efficient land use planning measures helps prevent road safety issues.

For more information, consult the full paper posted in the Conference Papers section of the TAC website. 

 


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