Brandon council asks province for power over speed limit

BRANDON — City council is urging the provincial government to let it lower the city’s default speed limit to help make residential roads safer.

The default speed limit in urban areas across the province is 50 kilometres per hour, while rural roads are subject to a 90 km/h speed limit.

Brandon councillors have repeatedly discussed reducing the default limit for residential streets.

“I hope that we bring residents on board for this conversation and dialogue around residential speed zones, whether it’s 40 or even 30 (km/h),” Coun. Kris Desjarlais said at Monday’s council meeting.

Council agreed to send a letter to Municipal Relations Minister Glen Simard requesting the city take over setting the default speed limit.

“The best way for our municipality to proceed with a legislation change would be to petition the minister,” said city traffic and transportation planner Sam van Huizen at the meeting.

A provincial change would allow the city to put up “gateway signage” at entrances to Brandon that notify drivers of the default speed limit. The province could also lower the default speed limit across the board, which would affect hundreds of communities in all parts of Manitoba.

Currently, the city is able to individually reduce the speed limit below the default limit on all residential roads, but would have to put up signs at every intersection to alert drivers to the change.

Van Huizen said the cost to do that would be $2.25 million for more than 4,000 posts and signs, which would be “fiscally irresponsible.”

“We basically can’t effectively enact similar neighbourhood-size reductions to speed limits at our local level without running into some physical requirements for signage and such,” van Huizen told the Brandon Sun after the meeting.

Desjarlais said the cost for the city to enact the change on its own is just too high.

“I don’t think any of us are interested in spending two and a half million to switch over, but I think we are interested in saving lives,” said Desjarlais.

He noted that parts of Toronto have a speed limit of 30 km/h on residential streets to save lives.

Lately, the City of Winnipeg has been similarly petitioning the province to lower the default speed limit to 40 km/h.

Last month, Premier Wab Kinew told CBC that Winnipeg can make the change on its own — by putting a sign at every intersection — but that a provincial decision would mean changes for every community.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said it makes sense for the Wheat City to send its request at the same time as Winnipeg.

“The bottom line is, Winnipeg had been kind of kicking this around a little bit … and the whole concept is it has to be done provincially. It can’t be random cities doing things differently,” said Fawcett after the meeting.

“So it’ll be discussions over the next year or two.”

Fawcett said the feedback from residents about speed-related pilot projects has been fairly positive.

In 2021, the city reduced the speed limit on part of Durum Drive to 40 km/h to address speed and traffic volumes. The program expanded to include neighbourhoods and a 30 km/h zone near Rideau Park, according to a city report.

Van Huizen agreed the project has produced positive results.

“You’re never going to please everybody, but certainly we’ve seen people who are very much in favour of this, have seen the benefits of a reduced speed limit,” he said. “We’ve also seen and heard people (who do) not see those benefits.”

If the default speed limit were to change, van Huizen said the city is aware that uptake might not be immediate.

“It doesn’t happen overnight, it’s almost a culture of change,” he said.

He likened it to when drunk driving and seatbelt laws were implemented. It took a long time for some people to get used to, but most people can’t imagine not wearing a seatbelt today.

— Brandon Sun