Proposed amendments to New Brunswick’s Motor Vehicle Act will provide a standard structure for school zone speed limits and require the recommendation of a transportation professional before raising or lowering them.
But the official opposition is questioning how effective the new regulations will be in ensuring student safety.
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Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Bill Fraser read the amendments in the provincial legislature on Wednesday.
Speaking to media on Thursday, he said the changes are to avoid the arbitrary lowering or raising of posted limits.
“I’m not comfortable arbitrarily changing the speed limit unless I have an engineering, professional engineer, provide that recommendation to say that it’s actually going to be safer,” Fraser said.
“The last thing I want to do is change the speed limit arbitrarily and make it a more unsafe situation.”
In recent months, the 70 km/h speed limit in front of Moncton’s Magnetic Hill School has been a concern for parents and teachers.
Fraser says he’s been contacted about changing the limit but the professional opinion he consulted advised against lowering it.
“I (sought) the advice of the engineers in my department who did an analysis of that roadway,” he said. “The recommendation came back based on the Transportation Association of Canada guidelines that that speed limit is appropriately set at 70.”
Moncton Northwest and Opposition MLA Ernie Steeves says the amendments don’t put the safety of students at Magnetic Hill School first.
“It does nothing for the people of Magnetic Hill School,” he said.
“There are children in danger. That is a blind hill coming up and heading down to a main highway,” he said. “Put some rumble strips in there, put up signs and get that changed.”
Steeves says the opposition consulted experts who agreed the limit should be lowered.
Fraser maintains the advice he’s been given is that limits are set for a reason and lowering them doesn’t necessarily increase the safety of the area.
“I think the public would automatically assume just because the speed’s lower they would assume that it might be safer,” Fraser said. “But I’ve learned very quickly from the advice I received from the technical experts and the engineers in my department that that is not always the case.”