Illegal truck traffic shakes Booth Street homes

Alayne McGregor

Residents of Booth Street near Primrose Avenue are frustrated by the frequent banging and shaking of their homes, caused by trucks – some travelling there illegally – hitting a nearby speed hump on Booth.

The noise and shaking is enough to wake them up at night, says resident Peter Unger, as well as causing plaster cracks and shaking mortar out of their homes’ foundations. A city-sponsored engineering study last September measured 289 “nuisance” vibrations in a 24-hour period.

But at the same time, the speed hump is succeeding at what it was installed to do – to substantially reduce the traffic speed on Booth from over 60km/h before it was installed. The BUZZ saw motorists noticeably brake and slow before crossing the hump. In 2017, city measurements showed the average speed in that section of Booth at 30km/h, the operating (85th percentile) speed at 40km/h, and the compliance with the 40km/h speed limit at 90 percent.

Residents say the vibration problem has recently become worse, exacerbated by more large trucks on Booth, which they think are going to the nearby construction zones at Zibi and the new central library site.

A city traffic count in 2017 measured an average of 11,800 vehicles in 24 hours on Booth between Albert and Somerset West. Of those, 382 were heavy vehicles.

That section of Booth from Albert Street south to Gladstone is not a truck route. Large trucks are supposed to use designated truck routes on Preston Street or Bronson Avenue instead. However, Booth is a more direct way to reach the Chaudière Bridge and the Zibi site.

Unger said he makes two to three reports of illegal trucks to the police every weekday, but has not noticed increased enforcement. “My truck counts are increasing every day.” He said he has seen a truck carrying steel girders, as well as large container trucks. His neighbour, Elsbeth Vaino, said she saw a truck carrying eight pontoon boats.

The issue was raised at the city Transportation Committee in February. Councillor Catherine McKenney told the committee that “After many meetings with staff, meetings with residents, we’ve all thrown up our hands and said, look, we need help, we need something put in place on Booth.”

In response, McKenney said, signs were added in April to both ends of the street indicating the fine for drivers of large trucks using the street. The city will also renew line and other pavement markings and make the speed hump sign more visible, and staff are considering other traffic calming options, they said.

City staff are opposed to removing the hump at Booth and Primrose, McKenney said, because it’s slowing northbound traffic going down the steep hill in that area (that hump is near the bottom of the hill.)

But staff have agreed to consider a third speed hump further up the hill to slow traffic before it reaches the hump at Primrose. The new hump would be paid for out of the ward’s temporary traffic calming budget, and McKenney hoped for installation in the spring of 2022 if it meets city warrants.

At the February meeting, Phil Landry, the city’s director of Traffic Services, was unenthusiastic about adding a third speed hump, saying that vehicles would speed up again after crossing that hump because of the steepness of the hill.

The two existing speed humps on Booth were installed in 2006 in response to community complaints about traffic. Several bulb-outs to narrow intersections were also installed. They were recommended by the Booth Street Corridor Study, approved by City Council in 2004.

Landry told the committee that any removal of a hump would require consultation with the entire neighbourhood since the humps were installed after community consultation.

When The BUZZ visited the area last month, we talked to nine people living on Booth between Primrose and Elm, all of whom said they were disturbed by the vibration.

We saw one large truck and several pickups with trailers hit the speed bump, creating loud bangs and bumps. The pickups are legally allowed on the street, and Vaino noted that, despite their smaller size, they tend to have an even louder sound when they hit the speed bump.

“We are not unaffected by speeding but the speed bump is much much worse than living with the speeding ever was,” Vaino said.

In that block, Booth is only two lanes wide, putting traffic near homes. The houses are brick-faced and located immediately next to the sidewalk, with at most a small flower bed between. Unger said that his house is almost 120 years old: before recent renovations, one part of his house was 13 inches lower than the rest, and he had cracks in his plaster and in his basement. “I’m sure the vibrations aren’t helping.”

Eugene Bolduc said he repointed the mortar in his house’s stone foundation last year, only to find it falling out later that year.

Martha Musgrove, who has lived on that block for three decades, said the problem became much worse in the last two years and is particularly noticeable between 6 and 8:30 a.m. She showed The BUZZ a photo of a flatbed truck that had passed by that morning.

The noise also makes it impossible to sit outside, Musgrove said. ; the only time it stopped was when Booth was closed for reconstruction in 2010. Vaino said she couldn’t sleep in her master bedroom at the front of her house because of the noise.

The city’s 2020 vibration study, conducted by engineering firm Explotech, detected 289 vibration events in 24 hours. They were recorded by a sensor located in the second-storey bedroom of a house near Booth and Primrose. Two other sensors were located in that house’s front yard and on its basement wall.

In a February report to Transportation Committee, however, city staff argued that only the vibration events measured by all three sensors (24 in all) were traffic-induced. The magnitude of each of these events was well below what might cause structural damage, staff said, and at only 75 percent of the level that would impact people.

There’s one more twist to this story, which may temporarily reduce the truck traffic in the area. As this story was going to press, The BUZZ checked the city’s official truck route map.

The map was recently updated to say that the Chaudière Bridge and the section of Booth north of Albert Street would be temporarily removed as truck routes from June 2021 to July 2022. Trucks were advised to use alternative routes, shifting them to the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge well to the east, and making Booth less attractive as a cut-through.

Musgrove and Unger said they had not been notified of this change. “If the temporary closure actually works, the respite will be most welcome,” Musgrove said. However, she said she was not hopeful since trucks routinely ignore the designated truck route. “The only thing that will keep trucks off Booth will be the closure of Booth at Albert or the Parkway or the closure of the Chaudière Bridge.”

Two photos by Martha Musgrove of trucks on Booth Street near her home and the speed hump: