The default speed limit on any rural road or street, unless otherwise posted, is 80 kilometres per hour. This fact raised a few eyebrows around the M.D. #124 council table on Oct. 7.
Of course, common sense usually prevails where limits are not posted, but in other areas it seems in short supply. Some councillors had plenty to say about that.
Before council was a proposal to establish 50 kph limits on several roads that by default did not have a limit under 80. These were the Turner Estates road south of Wagner, the Oslund subdivision road in Canyon Creek, the Poplar Estates road, the Three Acres road, East and West Eating Creek roads and the Allen Estates road.
A further proposal was for a limit of 35 kph on 1st Ave. in Canyon Creek, as per residents’ requests.
“I’d request all of Canyon Creek streets being 35,” said reeve Denny Garratt.
Other councillors, notably Mike Skrynyk and Debbie Parsons, did not like the idea of a ‘hodgepodge’ of speed limits, and said so.
Parsons said she preferred 50 k speed limits throughout, with the only exceptions being school and playground zones. “That’s fine,” Garratt countered, “but circumstances are not the same everywhere.”
Garratt went on to list the risk to life and limb encountered by Canyon Creek pedestrians, who are forced by lack of alternatives to walk on the streets.
“I myself damn near hit a pedestrian,” he said. “The road is the sidewalk. In the summer it’s terrible.”
M.D. manager Allan Winarski observed that residential streets in town are all at 50 kilometres per hour.
“You have sidewalks!” Garratt replied.
Skrynyk asked what happens with the entire length of Lakeshore Drive through Widewater and Wagner.
“Do you go down to 35?”
Parsons said she favoured putting up signs warning drivers about pedestrians, rather than having speed limits “going up and down all over the place.”
“I think you need to get some public input into this,” said Skrynyk.
The M.D.’s public works manager George Snider asked council if administration could at least go ahead and impose the 50 kph zones where they don’t exist. Council passed a motion to that effect, giving the necessary by-law all three readings in a single sitting.
Further, council asked administration to organize a public meeting to discuss south shore speed limits.

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