Do you have strong opinions about speed limits on Calgary streets? The city might want to hear from you.

On Wednesday, a council committee directed administration to consult Calgarians on four options for residential and collector roads:

Unposted 30 km/h speed limit.

30 km/h on residential roads and 50 km/h on collectors.

40 km/h on both residential and collector roads.

Status quo.

That last bit about keeping things the same was an amendment added on Saturday and pushes the timeline for completion of the consultations from March to June 2020.

Coun. Druh Farrell, who has championed the push to reduce speed limits, said models show the impact on commuters would be no more than two minutes at the maximum.

"How much is a child's life worth? Is it worth a couple of minutes in your daily commute? I believe it is, and then some," she said.

The impact of lower speeds

The push to reduce speed limits is centred around pedestrian safety, with World Health Organization statistics that show 90 per cent of pedestrians survive being struck by cars travelling 30 km/h.

That number drops to 60 per cent at 40 km/h and below 20 per cent at 50 km/h.

According to a city report, there's an average of 35,000 collisions on Calgary streets each year, 10,000 of which occur in residential neighbourhoods.

That same report to council says "40 per cent of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic collisions in residential neighbourhoods result in a fatality or injury."

Keith Simmons has been pushing for a speed reduction on Acadia Drive for years and spoke in favour of the changes in council chambers on Wednesday.

"As this conversation keeps going, we keep losing more and more lives, and we keep on having people whose lives are interrupted or drastically changed because of the simple fact that we're humans and we're going to make mistakes," he said to reporters after the meeting.

Societal costs

Those altered lives don't just take a personal toll, according to Farrell, but a social one as well.

"There's a huge societal cost, there's a huge cost to Alberta Health Services, to lost work time. It's about $1.2 billion a year from injuries and deaths on our streets," said Farrell.

"That has long been considered normal. I don't see anything normal about $1.2 billion worth of societal costs."

Reducing speed on both collector and residential roads would take "significant modification" of roads to help reduce speeds, according to city administration.

What it 'feels' like to drive down a narrow road at 50 km/h with objects on either side, top video, compared with a more wide-open road, bottom video.

And that comes with its own costs. Roads would have to be redesigned to encourage slower speeds, a critical component to ensuring limits are reasonable and speeding doesn't just continue as before.

Farrell said those changes should come first in new neighbourhoods, built with new speeds and design rules in place, and then worked into the existing system when roadways are repaved or redone.

Cost/benefit analysis

Coun. Jeff Davison said there's no doubt something has to be done to reduce residential collisions but pushed on Wednesday to include a cost/benefit analysis of making the changes.

"If we can reduce the number of fatalities, reduce the number of accidents, what is the savings back to the city, does that result in a reduction of operational budgets … and what does that look like?" he said.

"If the cost/benefit analysis does come back to say there's no benefit to making this change, or exercising this spend, then why would we do it?"

His council colleague Sean Chu, who opposes speed reductions, took a different rhetorical approach to the matter.

"Accidents are going to happen," he said.

"If we are going to be a nanny state, let's give everyone a sumo suit with a helmet."

Chu said if you don't want any accidents, the only way to do so is to ban cars.

The new set of recommendations will go before council next month for approval, and there's still the chance this direction could change.

Farrell said she believes council was clear when it first directed administration to look into the issue that it wanted a reduction in speeds, not maintenance of the status quo.