City of Powell River will be working on improving safety on major traffic thoroughfares.
At the November 3 committee of the whole meeting, councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said the city has been lobbying the province through the ministry of transportation and infrastructure about safety on Marine Avenue, specifically the section of the provincial highway between Duncan and Alberni streets. She said she thinks council needs to push for reducing the speed limit to 30 kilometres per hour on that section of highway.
“It’s hazardous,” said Leishman.
She said a little girl was hit by a car on the stretch of road a couple of years ago and the only reason she wasn’t severely injured was because the driver just happened to be going slower.
Leishman said the city talked to former minister of transportation and infrastructure Claire Trevena a week before the provincial election was called and there was interest in possibly revisiting the moving of the provincial highway as well. Leishman said the election has just happened and there will be a new minister, but she wanted to bring the matter up.
“Maybe we can follow up with a letter instigating the province to investigate the moving of the provincial highway as per our sustainable official community plan and seeing what we can do to try and get the speed limit reduced between Wharf and Alberni streets to 30 kilometres per hour,” said Leishman.
She said the city is waiting to hear back from the ministry but with the election, she wanted to jumpstart the matter.
Chief administrative officer Russell Brewer said Trevena had hinted the government was going to be launching some sort of pilot project for municipalities reducing speeds.
“She sort of hinted that it would be going ahead and that the city could send a letter to the minister requesting participation in the as-yet unannounced pilot,” said Brewer. “It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to send a letter.”
Committee chair and councillor George Doubt said he thinks pressuring the ministry of highways to reduce the speed limit is something the city can do again.
“We’ve done it before and we can try again,” said Doubt. “I didn’t think at the minister’s meeting that we got a really good reception on that but I think we need to look more strongly at the idea or relocating the highway and putting pressure on the provincial government to do that.
“Maybe we can do something about using Participate Powell River to gauge the support of the community for something like that, to find out how much people would like to see a relocation of the highway that would allow us to do a lot of positive things for active transportation along Marine Avenue and other streets downtown. If we relocated the highway, we could talk about widening bike lanes, putting in more pedestrian areas and one-way streets that are walkable and that would be attractive.”
Councillor Maggie Hathaway said regarding a reduction of speed on Marine Avenue, she thinks many people do it anyway because it is so narrow, but there is the “odd bozo” who doesn’t.
She said in terms of a request for moving the highway, the city should wait until the new minister is appointed, with a new letter to the new minister saying these are our concerns.
She agrees that public input should be sought and while some people may be opposed to dropping the speed limit, she thinks a lot of people would be supportive. She said she thinks there should be a campaign to relocate the highway to Manson Avenue because the highway is “totally dangerous” the way it is now.
Mayor Dave Formosa said unfortunately, Trevena did not run again, and she’s the one who gave the city some hope, but she did put a fair amount of emphasis on community support, so that’s probably a good place to start.
“I think there will be an overwhelming amount of support for it,” said Formosa. “We have a new [provincial] government and they have four years ahead of themselves. There’s a way to help pay for it by development of the properties all the way through there. We have a growing community and I think we can possibly try and get a meeting with the new minister and come up with a good plan ourselves and pitch it.
“It’s really something that’s needed. It’s been planned and I really think the community will get behind it.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she likes the idea of getting community support and she thinks a map of the route should be provided so the public can see what is being proposed.
Brewer said a letter could be followed up with the two items, but there is no point in going to the minister on moving the highway if there isn’t community support. He said he thinks staff could come up with a straightforward submission for the Participate Powell River website for public feedback.
Doubt summarized and said the two actions being discussed were writing a letter to remind the new minister of Powell River’s desire to reduce the speed limit on Marine Avenue, and the other action is to talk to communications staff about using Participate Powell River to get impressions on people’s ideas about moving the highway.
The committee recommended that staff look after both matters.
