Austin Trenholme bikes to and from work on the regular in Sackville, using York Street as a main route. But after a couple of close calls with vehicles, the lifelong cyclist decided some changes are needed. “I’ll be quite frank with you,” says Trenholme, “I don’t feel 100% comfortable biking on York Street as it is right now.”

Trenholme decided to form the Active Transportation Safety Committee of Tantramar, a group dedicated to making Tantramar safer for people walking, biking, or rolling. “There’s not really any group of people that I’m aware of that is advocating for the safety of active transportation users,” says Trenholme, and so he’s put out the call to recruit others interested in the same goal.

Originally from Summerside, Trenholm says active transportation advocacy runs in his family. His father Ken Trenholme is a spokesperson for SAFE Summerside, a group that recently presented an All Ages and Abilities Active Transportation Network Plan to Summerside’s city council. “In a way, through what he’s doing,” says Trenholme, “it made me realize streets are for everyone. So that’s the thing that I’m pushing for now.” Trenholme says he hopes the group will eventually create an Active Transportation (AT) plan for Tantramar.

While neighbouring Amherst passed its first AT Plan in 2018, Sackville did not have one on the books when it was amalgamated into Tantramar this year. The former town did set aside $30,000 in its 2022 budget to go towards active transportation studies and/or plans, but about a month after that budget was approved, the province announced it was dissolving Sackville and Dorchester, and creating Tantramar. No further action was taken by Sackville staff or council on active transportation in 2022.

Director of Active Living Matt Pryde says the first priority for the new municipality will be to develop a new Recreation Master Plan before moving on to an AT plan, but points out there’s money for neither in the 2023 budget. “It’s definitely on the radar for the future though,” says Pryde via email.

Tackling speed limits

Before he focusses on wider active transportation needs, Trenholme is targeting the route he experiences the most, York Street in Sackville. And he’s calling for what he calls a low cost fix — lower speed limits. “That’s really the main thing for me right now,” says Trenholme,”just reducing the speed limit on York Street, at least in the portion that is right in front of the university.”

Trenholme says there’s evidence that a 30 kilometre per hour speed limit “significantly reduces the amount of collisions between active transportation users and vehicles… You just have more reaction time, you have more opportunities to kind of see what’s going on in the situation.” At 40 and 50 km/h, he says, you’re much more likely to get hit by a vehicle.

Trenholme’s quest for lower speed limits won’t be the first made in Sackville. Avid cyclist and advocate Harold Jarche called for a rethink of speed limits on town roads in the fall of 2021, and the previous spring, Sackville town council turned down a request to lower limits on a section of Pond Shore Road to 50 km/h from the current 60 km/hr. Though they turned down the request to lower the speed limit, they also ignored an engineer’s recommendation on the issue that actually called for increasing the limit to 70 km/h.

When it comes to speed limits, engineers tend to follow the 85th percentile rule, which says the limit should be set at the maximum observed speed of 85% of drivers on a given road. A posted limit that is out of synch with the 85th percentile speed is considered a potential safety issue, which is why transportation engineers will sometimes recommend increasing speed limits at the same time as community residents are arguing they should be reduced, as in the Pond Shore Road case.

Under the 85th percentile rule, road design matters most, as that will determine the speed people choose to drive more than the posted limit. However traffic engineers will also sometimes okay the use of restrictive speed limits to create safe walking and cycling zones, particularly in the case of areas around schools.

AT committee next steps

Trenholme is starting out by focusing on research. So far he has requested data on collisions for the past five years from the RCMP, and also reached out to Tantramar Public Works for any traffic count data available. When CHMA dropped by to meet him, Trenholme had a fresh copy of the NACTO Street Design Guide under his arm. The guide, published by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, is considered by many transportation planners as the gold standard in safe, AT-forward street design.

But Trenholme also knows he will need strength in numbers to make the Active Transportation Safety Committee effective. Harold Jarche says he has agreed to lend a hand to the project, and Trenholme says he has made contact with the Community Services Coordinator for the Mount Allison Student Union.

Trenholme is hoping to hear from others interested in Active Transportation issues, whether it be simply as a supporter, or as someone interested in helping with the work and decision-making in the group.

You can find the Active Transportation Safety Committee of Tantramar on Facebook.