Woonerf's in Ottawa - discuss!

Could Ottawa try out a Woonerf? Between the Williams St pedestrian area, the Laurier bike lane and Ottawa's existing woonerf, maybe we can tap into Ottawa's willingness for traffic pilots and give something a try. Perhaps the upcoming traffic calming measures for Roosevelt Avenue in Westboro could double as an experiment in new design.

From Wikipedia: "A woonerf (Dutch plural: woonerven) in the Netherlands and Flanders is a street where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists. The techniques of shared spaces, traffic calming, and low speed limits are intended to improve pedestrian, bicycle, and automobile safety.

Ottawa has one already and you can read about it on Greater Ottawa and WestsideAction.

Ottawa might not be able to reset the legal priority of road users on its own - but there is a lot that can be done with how we build streets and indicate to drivers what the "natural" safe speed is for residential streets. Note that a Woonerf is not at all like the Spark's Street Mall - they are strictly for residential streets where the only purpose to the street is to get residents in and out of their local neighbourhood.

Comments welcome... pros cons? Ideas where a pilot might make sense?