Morinville residents will have to stay below 40 km/h on residential streets under a new bylaw set to reach town council next year.
Morinville council got an update on a proposed rewrite to the town’s traffic safety bylaw during the Dec. 13 committee of the whole meeting.
Morinville’s current traffic safety law has not been amended since it was passed in 2013, a report to council showed. Town enforcement services supervisor William Norton proposed to rewrite the law to improve road safety.
Many changes
Norton said the new law’s most controversial change was its proposal to lower the speed limit on all local roads to 40 km/h from the current 50 unless otherwise posted. The speed limit in alleys would be 20 km/h.
Norton said these changes would improve resident safety, as lower speeds reduce the risk of death and serious injury in collisions. (Every five km/h increase in speed doubles the risk of someone dying in crash, reports the Capital Region Integrated Safety Partnership.) Morinville would be catching up to its neighbours in making this change, he noted — St. Albert and Edmonton already have 40 km/h residential speed limits.
Based on the length of local roads in town affected by this new speed limit, Norton said this change would add at most 27 seconds to anyone’s daily commute.
The new law proposes to shorten school zone hours to 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Norton said every school in town was finished for the day by 3:10, so the current hours were excessive.
Playground zone hours, in contrast, were to be extended to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from the current 8:30 a.m. to one hour after sunset.
“People are in the parks after dark,” Norton said, especially during winter, when the sun sets as early as 4:13 p.m. These hours were easier to understand and reflected regional practices.
The current traffic law gives residents 72 hours to clear snow from their sidewalks, which was a lot of time and allowed for ice buildup, Norton said. The new law shortens this to 48 hours for residential areas and 24 hours for commercial, industrial, and institutional ones. Norton said most property owners were already clearing their sidewalks within these lower timelines.
The new law proposes to ban the use of eight-way stop flashing lights on school buses on 100 Ave. and on 100 St. south of 101 Ave.
Under Alberta law, if a school bus is stopped on an undivided road with its red lights flashing, traffic in both directions must stop at least 20 m away from the bus. Norton said this caused confusion on 100 Ave., where cars on one side of the street might be five lanes away from a bus stopped with its red lights flashing on the other.
The new law allows anyone under 16 (or anyone accompanying someone under 16) to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk. Council heard this change was meant to remove slower riders from the road and let scooters and skateboards travel together with bikes.
To reduce head injuries, the new law would require anyone under 18 to wear an approved helmet while operating any muscle-powered wheeled conveyance. Mayor Simon Boersma said he was concerned this could penalize people who could not afford helmets. Coun. Scott Richardson said this could result in kids in strollers or wagons being ticketed.
Boersma was also concerned about the law’s plan to make 100 Ave., the town’s industrial park, 100 St. south of 90 Ave., and Cardiff Road the town’s only designated truck routes. This would require grain trucks to come in from the south side of town instead of 100 Ave. to get to the Morinville Seed Cleaning plant, and would make it more difficult for truckers to find places to park.
“I’m concerned we may be chasing the trucks around town,” he said.
Norton said this change was meant to reduce wear and tear on roads from heavy trucks and stop trucks from cutting through town to get to 100 Ave. Drivers would be allowed to leave designated truck routes to make deliveries, but would have to return to the closest such route when leaving town.
Norton said the new law would not address e-scooters, which were illegal in Morinville.
Council was to get the first draft of the new traffic safety bylaw on Feb. 14, 2023.
Crosswalk cash
Council also learned Dec. 13 that it would have to spend up to $365,750 to implement its pedestrian crossing review.
Morinville council got the results of a safety review for 47 of its 49 crosswalks last April. The report recommended a long list of improvements to the town’s crosswalks, including curb extensions, upgraded signs and paint, flashing beacons, and removal.
The town would have to spend $365,750 to do everything the review recommended, Fire Chief Brad Boddez said. If the town did everything but the curb extensions — which Boddez recommended, as the town was still evaluating the effectiveness of those items — the improvements would cost $155,750. He also provided estimates for the cost to upgrade crosswalks in specific regions, such as 100 St. and 100 Ave.
Coun. Scott Richardson denounced the safety review, saying all these crosswalks met safety codes at the time they were built.
“We have an unaccredited agency telling us we need to do half a million dollars of work on our sidewalks in town. It’s ludicrous, in my mind.”
Boddez said administration would look to fund these improvements in the next two to six years.
