Motorists will soon need to slow down when driving on bikeways in New Westminster.
In an effort to improve safety on New West streets, the city has adopted a 30 kilometre per hour speed limit for vehicles along bikeways, greenways and streets that don’t allow cycling on sidewalks. The slower speed limit will first take effect along the Rotary Crosstown Greenway, followed by the London-Dublin Greenway and the Central Valley Greenway.
“I think this is all about making sure that our greenways and bikeways are made as safe as possible for all users, whether that’s cyclists or pedestrians. Studies have shown when vehicles are travelling under 30 kilometres per hour, the chance of a serious accident reduces substantially,” said Mayor Jonathan Cote. “We think at the very least, these types of speed limits should be in place where we have higher number of pedestrians and cyclist traffic.”
The city’s advisory committee for transit, bicycles and pedestrians made the recommendation after researching options to make cycling safer and more comfortable. In addition to reducing the potential for crashes and severity of injuries in crashes, the city hopes lower speed limits will encourage more people to consider walking and cycling as a daily mode of travel.
According to the city, the 30 km/hour speed limit will be extended to all streets that don’t allow cycling on the sidewalk, by mid-2018.
“It won’t take effect until we actually get the signage up on the streets. We can’t have the speed limits without the proper signage,” Cote said. “It will be going into effect on the different routes very soon, as we start to get the signage up across the different greenways and bikeways.”
Cote said a motion was recently debated a the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention that would have allowed regions and cities across B.C. to adopt a 30 km/hour speed limit in residential areas, as provincial support is required to do a blanket change. While that motion was narrowly defeated at the UBCM, he said cities are able to look at specific roadways as long as they have speed limit signs in place.
“I guess, technically, the city could put speed limit signs on every single road, but that could be cumbersome and not overly productive,” he said. “We have decided to focus our efforts on the greenways and bike routes because we feel this is where we have the highest amount of multi-modal travel and where we would have the most community safety benefits.”
