Now that a pilot project has been approved, Centre Wellington staff will choose a neighbourhood and attempt to slow traffic to safer speeds.
The project will see the selected neighbourhood's speed limit reduced from 50 kms/per hour to 40 in an effort to reduce local collisions. Reducing these speeding incidents is a priority on local roadways, says Township Manager of Engineering Adam Gilmore.
Per a report, "Township staff will select a neighborhood for the pilot program in late 2023, and begin public education and stakeholder engagement and consultation activities in early winter 2024, with the goal of fully implementing the program in the spring of 2024."
The document went on to say "the pilot program will run throughout the remainder of 2024, and Township staff will report back to Township Council in late 2024 to report on findings and future recommendations."
Gilmore says both costs and required materials have been looked into already at this stage of the pilot.
"We think it'll cost about $20,000 to implement this pilot study," Gilmore stated.
"The township already has resources as far as some speed monitoring devices that we've purchased that we'll be able to leverage and use for the study. We have a budget that's already been approved for traffic calming that we can tap into to help pay for it," he said.
Gilmore also says a partnership with the police will be a key aspect of the program's success.
"We want to get feedback from members of the community including the (Wellington County) OPP. They're obviously a really important partner in this, so we'll talk to them about implementing those speed limits in that neighbourhood, and their ability to enforce that," Gilmore explained.
"We want to find out how they can compliment what we're doing, posting some of the stuff that we'll prepare to their social media," he added.
This partnership will be from start to finish, Gilmore says. OPP will in selecting a neighbourhood before offering that enforcement help.
A bylaw amendment will be step one for the pilot, in order to reduce the speed limit down to a 40 kms/per hour zone.
Listen to the CICW story below: