Councillor Kurt Christopherson voiced concerns at Tuesday night’s regular council meeting regarding the volume of traffic detouring around the Voght St. Project via bench neighbourhoods, and made a recommendation that speeds be monitored and potentially lowered in that area.

“With the traffic that’s being diverted because of the Voght St project, the traffic is moving through the bench, especially on Parker and Juniper… as people are getting used to the fact that Voght St. is quite often difficult to navigate right now,” said Christopherson.

“People are looking for shortcuts anywhere they can find them, and what I’m afraid of is if we don’t monitor the situation and come up with some recommendations, people are going to, even if we just slow down on Juniper and Parker, then speed up on Castillou and on the back road and try to get to their destination as quickly as possible. I’ve noted already that the traffic is picking up throughout the entire bench area so I’d like to encourage that we come up with some solutions, and that’s what this motion will allow staff to do.”

Councillor Bhangu suggested that the mobile speed watch sign be placed along the detour route in order to gather information about speeds in the area, and also to encourage people to slow down.

“I think this is a needed move,” said Bhangu.

However, throughout the course of the discussion, several councillors and Mayor Brown agreed that rather than beginning by monitoring speeds, the speed limit should immediately be reduced to 30km/hr as was done on Reid Ave. back in March.

“Basically (the motion) was to have monitoring done with recommendations coming back to council from staff,” said Christopherson.

“Personally, I would hope that we would reduce the speed limit, similar to what has been done on Reid, for the entire area, because… I’ve been looking at it myself and not only is the traffic increasing they’re not always paying attention to the present speed limit, so I would like to see the entire bench area reduced, at least during the time of the Voght St Project. I would be prepared to have it reduced to 30km/hr immediately if we could because the traffic is already getting out of control.”

Mayor Brown agreed, stating that the influx of traffic to the area had already drawn complaints from some residents.

“It’s Parker, Juniper, Reid, Mountain, Grimmett, Castillou, all of them are going to have increased traffic that they just don’t need during this timeframe, and I’ve had a lot of complaints from citizens,” Brown said.

All councillors voted in favour of reducing speeds on all Bench area streets, at least for the duration of the Voght St. construction project which is projected to continue through October.

Sean Smith, Director of Corporate Services also brought up the possibility of reducing speeds in the downtown area as well.

“I don’t mind if staff look at making that change right now, but it might make sense to have staff bring forward a report with data anyways, because we would also like to address the downtown zone,” said Smith.

“Part of that is for the COVID relief measures, there’s kind of been a discussion on that point, and so I think that there’s just general concern and discussion regarding residential as well as the speeds in our downtown zone. So, I think it’s something we as staff wouldn’t mind an opportunity to provide some comments and feedback on, from a planning perspective, and a public works perspective. I still think there might be some value in bringing that forward for the downtown zone as well.”

The speed change on the Bench will be put in place as soon as the new speed limit signs are installed.