During their regular meeting on Wednesday, Mat 27, council voted in favour of adopting a speed limit policy.
“The purpose is the speed will have a consistent and publicly transparent process to deal with each modification request and provide a consistent timeframe in which requests are reviewed and (addressed) on an annual basis,” explained Matt Janz, general manager of environmental and protective services for the MD.
The policy will give administration and council a framework to look at when they receive requests from the public regarding a decrease or increase to speed limits within the MD.
CAO Luc Mercier noted it’s an opportunity for the municipality to “deal with the way that speed limits have been set across the rural roads in the MD.”
“From my perspective, they’re somewhat haphazard,” he continued. “I’ve had different councillors complain to me about the rationale for certain speed limits. The reasoning was probably sound at the time that certain areas were reduced speeds, for example, you’ve got a 80-kilometre per hour gravel road, then all of a sudden there’s a section that someone had an issue with at some point and the speed limit was reduced to 60-kilometres, wherein a similar area in a different part of the MD wasn’t dealt with in the same fashion.”
Although the provincial government has set 80-kilometres per hour as the maximum speed for rural roads, the MD has the authority to set alternate speeds within their boundaries.
According to the policy, a request to change a speed limit submitted via email or in-person from a resident must be received with justification by April 1 of each calendar year. They will be reviewed once a year to allow administration enough time to conduct a detailed and comprehensive analysis by Sept. 30 of each year.
The request will only be considered if there’s a petition in favour of the change signed by 85 per cent of those living on the street.
The evaluation criteria will consist of 24-hour logging of traffic speed to achieve an accurate representation of what people drive down the road, the average volume of traffic, a review of collisions and complaints that have happened on that particular stretch of road, and a review of road use, among other factors.
Before a final decision is made, council will discuss the requests and pass a motion to either accept or decline the change after reviewing the information from administration.
If it's turned down, a resident can appeal through a written request to the director of public safety, which will be brought before council within 30 days for consideration.
During discussions, Coun. Dana Swigart raised the question of possibly installing speed bumps within subdivisions to help with speed reduction.
“I think I found out that speed bumps aren’t allowed on provincial or MD roads, I’m not sure within subdivisions if that’s even something that can be used,” he noted.
Janz said administration could look into the idea more.
“We did have some discussions on traffic calming objects being used in areas where they do have warrant. We feel that if council wants, we can come up with a plan on that within subdivisions in more detail.”
While council agreed speed reduction was something to be explored, some were against the idea of adding speed bumps.
“I think there’s a place for them, but not in the little subdivisions,” Coun. Ben Fadeyiw said.
Coun. Marc Jubinville agreed, “A lot of these subdivisions, it’s usually some of the residents within that subdivision that are driving too fast and I think some of these people can take it upon themselves to take some license plates numbers.”
Now that council has accepted the speed limit policy, administration will be reviewing all of the speeds within the municipality before bringing the topic back to council in the future.
“Once that happens, we will have a baseline set for the MD and the procedures and protocols,” Mercier detailed. "There’s specific guidelines and what administration will use to consider when developing speed limit recommendations to council. We’re just trying to reset, set the baseline, and move forward from there.”
