BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
Gord Lundgren sees a lot from the window of his Lloyd Street apartment.
He watches as cars speed down the steep downtown hill and get into accidents at the corner of Lloyd and Elm.
Something has got to change, he says.
?The speed limit is 50, not 60 or 70,? says Lundgren. ?The motorcycles do 80 over the hill, and then they have to slam on their brakes.?
He wants prominent 50 km/h signs to be posted at both ends of the hill.
Lundgren is also concerned about noise made by transports and large trucks braking as they come down the hill.
The city needs to pass a jake brake bylaw, says Lundgren.
The man's voice becomes angry when he recalls accidents he has witnessed in the past few years.
?There were five accidents just last year,? he says. ?I remember one in the fall of 2002 when five cars rear ended each other. There were two ambulances there. It was caused by someone driving too fast.?
The police and the city really need to do something to stop the speeding, he says.
?They did photo radar on Elm Street . . . where they really need to do that is on Lloyd Street,? he says. ?Or maybe they could put up their tripod that shows how fast cars are going. They had it out in front of the hospital.?
But Sgt. Gary Lavoie of the Greater Sudbury Police Service says complaints about speeding on Lloyd Street are rare. He hasn't heard of any recent accidents either. ?Last year we had 1,500 traffic complaints, and not one of them was from Lloyd Street,? he says.
It's easy to misjudge how fast cars are travelling when they crest the top of a hill, says Lavoie. ?People's perception of speed is usually drastically off. I've proved this with a radar gun time and again,? he says.
The police tend to focus on areas that they get a lot of complaints about, says Lavoie. ?Regional Road 80, now that's a problem,? he says. ?When we get phone calls we have to gage their priority.?
The city hasn't had many complaints about speeding on Lloyd Street either, though they are always looking for potential problem areas, says Nathalie Mihelchic, coordinator of traffic and transportation for the City of Greater Sudbury.
?Sure, we can look at it,? she says. ?We are quite open about moving around our mobile display unit if people call in about problem speeding in an area.?
Signs asking truckers not to use their jake brakes were posted at the top of Lloyd Street last year, after citizens complained about the noise, says Mihelchic. But there is no jake brake bylaw in the City of Greater Sudbury, she says.
?We heard from councillors and concerned residents. On a hill or a slope it tends to be worse,? she says. But a warning sign is just that. Truckers must decide for themselves when they need to use their jake brakes, says Mihelchic.
Lynne Reynolds, councillor for Ward 6 in the City of Greater Sudbury, says she always drives cautiously on the Lloyd Street hill. ?I'm so used to it that I'm always careful. I guess I've lived with it my whole life,? she says.
Reynolds hasn't heard any complaints from her constituents about the safety of the hill. ?If it is a problem, I will look into it,? she says.
But pedestrians on the Lloyd Street hill are far more certain that traffic problems do exist. ?If the police were to set up a speed trap at Fairview and Lloyd, they would certainly boost their revenue,? says Alex McGregor.
?I'm walking today, but I was driving up the other day. You can't see to turn into the apartments,? he says. ?The cars just come roaring down the hill.?
Inta Zarins, who regularly visits her daughter's Lloyd Street apartment, agrees. ?A number of years ago, I had a friend who was completely decapitated here. He hit a bus going over the hill,? she says.
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