WATCH ABOVE: Ward 12 Councillor Shane Keating is suggesting some changes to stop residential speeding. Sarah Offin reports.
CALGARY – A Calgary councillor is hoping to decrease the amount of speeding in residential areas by giving peace officers the ability to ticket lead-footed drivers.
Ward 12 Councillor Shane Keating put forward a notice of motion during Monday afternoon’s council meeting that suggests using bylaw officers to issue speeding tickets on residential streets in city neighbourhoods.
Keating asked that a report be completed and presented to the Transportation and Transit committee by June 17 to examine the time frame it would take to implement the program, where the revenues would go and best practices for traffic enforcement in residential zones.
But the notice of motion was deferred to the police commission in council on Monday evening; the commission will report back to council in September.
Keating also suggested the City of Calgary try out a one-year pilot program using ten current officers.
“The difficulty that we’ve seen is if a police officer is at a school zone and they get a higher priority call, they have to leave,” explained Keating. “Therefore the school zone is unattended for a length of time.”
“With this program, what happens is you’ll have say ten officers who will be dedicated to residential only – and they will be peace officers or cadets from the police service.”
When asked how prepared cadets and peace officers would be to deal with speeders, Keating says City of Calgary peace officers already work challenging jobs.
According to Keating’s motion, there were nearly 4,000 traffic collisions in residential areas between 2008 and 2012, including one which was fatal.
With files from Doug Vaessen
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