Speed limits on Saskatoon’s residential streets are under review following safety concerns raised by residents.
The City of Saskatoon said the concerns came from neighbourhood traffic reviews.
Between 2015-19, the city says there were 38,049 motor vehicle collisions, resulting in 27 deaths on Saskatoon roads, according to a press release.
The city said nearly 15,000 people participated in its online survey, with another 414 people invited to complete a third-party survey.
Sixty-five per cent of open survey respondents prefer the speed limit to stay the same on all streets, whereas fifty-two per cent of third-party survey respondents prefer one lower. Of those who support a speed reduction on local streets, 40 km/h is the more preferred speed.
“There is a trend to lowering the speed limit on residential and local roads so the surveys did highlight there’s a strong preference to leave things alone on the arterial roads who are larger roads that connect multiple neighbourhoods,” Jay Magus, the city’s director of transportation said via Zoom on Thursday.
“That wasn’t necessarily unexpected so it kind of confirms what we thought people would think with regards to go to those type of streets.”
The city said results from this spring’s surveys will be presented to city council’s standing policy committee on transportation on June 7 along with collision statistics and current speed limits in other Canadian cities.
“It’s standard practice to kind of see what other cities are doing with any issue. Right. And what the discussion we’re having among ourselves, in our community related to speed limits is very similar to every other city that we found,” Magus said.
“We will look to in August to give council some recommendations on lowering the speed limit or not on this type of street or on that type of street and then and then go from there based on their direction.”
Administration is planning to present a report with recommendations to the standing policy committee on transportation in August.
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