The number of collisions in Grande Prairie has dropped 45 per cent over the last two years. That’s what new data released by the City shows. Protective Services Deputy Director Chris Manuel says that since the City put an action plan in place four years ago, he has seen a significant drop in numbers.
“Over the past two years, we’ve been able to sustain a 45 per cent reduction in injury collisions. Additionally, the number of violation tickets issued through enforcement has dropped significantly as well around that same 40 per cent mark.”
The Safe City Roads Action Plan was created by the city in December 2014. Its goal was to try to cut down on the 640 collisions officials saw that year. Since then, Manuel says a number of extra measures were added to places like high collision intersections and school zones, which he credits for getting those numbers down to around 350.
“The city invested in additional Peace Officers, RCMP officers, implemented a very robust automated traffic enforcement program… and the collision reporting centre has launched this September which gives us real-time collision data. Every tool we had at our disposal to reduce the challenges we were facing was deployed.”
Manuel says the program was also able to cut down on the number of intersection violation tickets by 29 per cent. That went from 5570 tickets over a nine-month period in 2015/16 to 3980 over a 12 month period this past year.
Speeding violations also went down 37 per cent from 32363 tickets in 2015/16 to 20400 this year. Moving forward, Manuel says he plans to shift focus from the enforcement side of things to the education side with a focus on stopping repeat offenders.