Beaverlodge town council wants to hear what the community has to say when it comes to lowering the speed limit in town. It has put out a survey on social media asking if it should look into dropping the speed from 50 kilometres per hour to 30 kilometres per hour on all residential and downtown roads. Councillor Calvin Mosher says safety is top of mind for members of council.
“We’re looking to make sure that no children are struck by vehicles and that no seniors are stuck trying to cross the streets in the downtown area. We also have a fairly active commercial area downtown and it’s hard for people to back out or get into parking spots with people travelling at a more aggressive speed.”
Mosher describes Beaverlodge as both a young and an old town with high populations of both younger and older people. Using his street as an example, he says there are 12 children mostly under the age of five years old living there.
Park and school zones, as well as a few of the streets in Beaverlodge, are already marked at 30 kilometres per hour with the rest at 50 kilometres per hour. Mosher believes the confusion of that is another reason to bring the speed limit down across the board.
“A lot of people don’t know just which one they’re on and whether it’s 30 or 50 and we thought rather than have all of the differences in speed zones that [we would have] one flat rate for all streets.”
Mosher says this issue may be brought back to council members around September for more discussion. The survey can be found on the town’s Facebook page.
