Centre Wellington Township council passed a bylaw on Monday night that lowered the speed limit on 2nd Line in Nichol to 60 from 80km/hour, from Concession 6 to County Road 7.
But passing that bylaw and reducing the speed limit on a rural road to an urban standard has led to other requests for similar treatment on rural roads. Council recently approved the speed reduction at its committee of the whole, and then deliberated that recommendation
Councillor Walt Visser, who opposed lowering the speed limit of a rural road at the committee of the whole, argued again against such a move. He said he drove through the township over the weekend, and, “I don’t think reducing speed limits solves the problem.”
Council heard that residents on the 2nd Line of old Nichol are concerned for safety because the shoulders on the road are narrow, and the westerly portion in particular is so hilly that drivers travelling the speed limit would have difficulty stopping for school buses stopped at the bottom of the hills there.
Visser said he has seen Community Safety Zones in other communities where the fines for speeding are doubled, and said it makes more sense to encourage drivers to slow down than it does to reduce the speed limits. He said the Community Safety Zones might be the best way to convince people to slow down, and suggested applying one to the west end of the 2nd Line might be the best solution.
“We can make every road in Centre Wellington 60km/hour,” Visser said. “That is not going to solve the problem.”
And, he added, once the township has completed work on South River Road, that route between Elora and Fergus will attract some of the traffic now using the 2nd Line.
But councillor Fred Morris argued the Community Safety Zones are not the solution to slowing down speeders.
He said a few years ago, OPP Sergeant Rick Weiler, then the head of the Traffic Unit, told council that such designations “do absolutely no good at all … They are just a waste of time.”
He said the problem is the steep dips in the road.
It was then councillor Ron Hallman told council he has had requests for speed limit reductions on two other rural roads.
He said he would like to add Concessions 3 and 9 in West Garafraxa to the list of rural roads that should have speed limits cut from 80km/hour to 60.
“I’ve heard concerns for lower speed limits,” he said, adding that the roads are gravel and narrow, with little in the way of shoulders, which reduces a driver’s margin for error.
Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj said those concerns should be referred to the operations committee for a report.
Council then approved the recommendations from its committee of the whole. It later gave three readings to the speed reduction bylaw for the 2nd Line.
