SHAWVILLE, QUEBEC | Lucerne Boulevard, or the Lower Aylmer Road, leads a double life. During the day, it's known for traffic congestion during the rush hours. This is only half the story, although it is what we hear about most often.

As more homes are built, and more housing tracts announced, commuters grow even more annoyed. They write letters to the editor and to their councilors, but the city's planning department seems immune to requests that no new housing be approved until this central artery is enlarged. Lucerne, after all, is one of the busiest in the city's west end.

That's bad enough. Why will the city not make its housing approvals dependent upon its capacity to move the traffic caused by new housing. This seems pretty elementary.

Road improvement is not as jazzy as new sports facilities or a new waterfront, but we expect adequate streets as one of the necessities of city life. Councilors may tire of complaints about hour-long traffic snarls, but this is one of their duties -- to bring their neighbourhoods' needs to council. Lucerne's inadequacies would be an ideal project for all three of Aylmer's councilors; it is not a contentious file, and shouldn't prod personal rivalries.

Lucerne also has a hidden life. This is more dramatic than traffic jams: nighttime speeding.

A twenty-five year police veteran was the most recent to bring this to the attention of the Bulletin.

"They reach up to 200 km per hour," he said, and he has the experience to estimate speeds. "It's only a matter of time before we have a fatal pile up."

Many residents have mentioned speeding and dangerous driving on Lucerne during the night, especially on the straight stretch from Rivermead to the bridge. The police veteran figures these are young men racing.

ustraSpeeding is a problem everywhere, and it is not just youth who speed. Too often residents want stop signs or traffic lights to "stop speeding." They also stop all efficiency of a street. Stop signs break up steady traffic flow in peak periods; they add to air pollution with the stopping and accelerating; they increase frtion in drivers.

We should focus on the causes of speeding -- especially competitive or bragging-rights speeding at night -- but until we get a handle on that, the most effective solution is more police presence.

The sight of a patrol car will slow speeders. A few big fines-200 km/hr in a 50 km/hr zone-will be much more effective that a couple of stop signs or speed bumps.

Our city's policing costs are high already -- witness the labour dispute underway -- so is there a way to crate a new police category, like green hornets, or can photo-radar be installed? There has to be a creative approach to speeding, certainly not the brainless "more stop signs!", and certainly not pretending that the problem will solve itself. Lucerne's too many cars for too small a road isn't solving itself either. Both problems are getting worse.

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Copyright © 2009 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/12.09