ATHABASCA - Athabasca will not be changing speed limits on the streets of Cornwall or any other area of town in the near future after a motion to cut the speed limit to 40 km/h from 50 km/h was soundly defeated.
At the June 9 regular council meeting, mayor Rob Balay was joined by four other councillors — Sara Graling, Jon LeMessurier, Dave Pacholok and Edie Yuill — and voted against the motion by Coun. Loretta Prosser who, along with Coun. Ida Edwards, made for a 2-5 vote.
At its May 3 meeting, council asked administration to provide a report with more data to help decide whether lowering the speed limit to 40 km/h, which CAO Rachel Ramey presented with a request for a decision to be made as whether they would be moving forward.
The original request came forward from a Cornwall resident who also asked for pedestrian crosswalk signs to be installed at Cornwall Dr. and 28th St., after witnessing numerous vehicles disobeying speed limits and signage on many occasions. That request was quickly granted, but the additional request to bring the speed limit down wasn’t justified in the five council members’ eyes.
Ramey reported roughly 50 signs would have to be replaced at about $100 each — $5,000. She also noted there have only been two requests to consider the change.
“I think for consistency's sake, we would have to make everywhere in town 40 except for the highways that we don't have control over,” Ramey told council. “I don't think trying to define arterial roads within individual neighborhoods will be easy, or fair to our residents or visitors that are traveling the streets and might get confused on which streets are 40 and which are 50 and then there will also be added costs to make sure it's clearly defined.”
She added that if council does consider moving in that direction, she would recommend conducting a survey to gauge the thoughts of residents.
Edwards and Prosser approved of the idea of a survey.
“I'm interested in seeing a survey put out to find out what people think in the area,” said Edwards. “I know driving 40 km/h down Wood Heights Road is very slow, but I also do approve of 40 km/h through Cornwall, so to find out what the public is thinking and how they feel would be a good opportunity for engagement.”
Graling didn’t feel the same, saying it was a non-issue for her.
“If we've had two complaints, and we don't have a lot of incidents related to speed, for me, this is us just really creating a project at cost to taxpayers that is not really connected to an issue. I would like to see us just leave the speed limit as it is,” she said, adding the topic could certainly be revisited if the public felt differently.
Mayor Balay said if council was willing to implement it, he would be comfortable doing it without a public survey and reiterated it was about consistency for him, pointing out Hees Estates and the South Hill are already at 40 km/h, and if they decided to do the same in Cornwall, that would leave the West End and East Hill at 50 km/h, leaving a patchwork throughout the town.
He did bring his own stats to the table too though, telling council that in the case of an accident, an increase in speed from 25 km/h to 37 km/h increases the chance of significant injury and death from 10 per cent to 25 per cent. At 75 km/h that increases further to 90 per cent.
Conversely, he said, there is a difference between reducing speed limits and actually reducing speed limits, as studies have shown.
“Reducing the speed limit reduces drivers’ speeds by about 25 per cent. So, that means if you're going to go from 50 to 30, in reality, drivers are only going to slow down five miles per hour because of their habits, even though it's posted, and you enforce it, they're only going to slow down that little bit,” said the mayor.
