In the wake of a tragic accident in January of 2022, which claimed the life of a young girl, there has been a stronger push in the City of Kingston for traffic calming efforts in residential neighbourhoods and around schools.
As part of those efforts, the city enacted a pilot project that has seen increased speeding violations as well as a reduction in speed limits to 40 kilometres per hour in the Westwoods and Strathcona Park neighbourhoods and 30 in front of the schools there.
Brian Cox is a longtime resident of the Strathcona Park neighbourhood.
He feels it’s made at least some difference in his area.
“To me it has. I’ve slowed down and I try and be aware of the children in the area,” said Cox.
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However, he said some people still aren’t abiding by the new rules.
“People sort of come off Princess Street onto Indian Road and come around the corner and they’re moving pretty fast,” he added.
A staff recommendation going to the council on Tuesday will, if approved, mean these regulations will be slowly rolled out across all of the city’s residential neighbourhoods and school zones.
The city’s director of transportation and transit, Ian Semple, said the pilot project provided good insight.
“Most of what we’ve learned was how people reacted to it. They’ve generally been received quite favourably. Many of our neighbourhoods have different speed limits on different streets as a result of requests over time and this allows us to sort of provide a uniform speed limit,” said Semple.
If approved on Tuesday, the plan will be rolled out in three phases over the next two years.
The first phase, costing around $400,000, will begin this spring and would see the 40 kilometre per hour limits in residential areas and 30 kilometre per hour limits in school zones to 25 other Kingston neighbourhoods.
Councillor Lisa Osanic, who had the pilot project in her district, said she fully intends to support the plan at council.
“What I’ve noticed, though, is that the neighbourhood areas that don’t have that neighbourhood traffic zone, they have asked me since 2022 ‘When can we get some?” She said.
Council will vote on the report when it meets Tuesday night.
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