Parksville residents concerned about speeding dump trucks cutting through residential side streets have reached out to city council.
In reference to those concerns, Mayor Ed Mayne put forth a motion on Monday, May 3, to limit the speed of ‘heavy-duty’ vehicles travelling down side streets within the city. He initially introduced the notice of his motion at the previous council meeting on April 19.
As per Monday’s agenda, his motion recommendation read “staff be directed to review the option for reducing the speed limit for heavy-duty vehicles, such as dump trucks, on side streets from 50 km/h to 35 km/h within the City of Parksville and to provide council with options at a future meeting.”
“What’s happening is that the dump trucks can’t make the turn on Moilliet, so they’re going down side streets… My thought is that, with any side streets - we don’t have sidewalks, we don’t any facilities for kids or for people to walk down. It would seem to me to make sense to slow the trucks down because they are doing in excess of 50 km/h now,” said Mayne.
Keeva Kehler, the chief administrative officer for the city, said there is a transportation plan that does oversee the designation of routes, whether they be arterial or neighbourhood routes.
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“I think this will be a fairly big piece of work for staff to review so that it’s something that doesn’t have unintended consequences somewhere else. Typically, what we see is, if you limit the traffic in anyway on one street, they just move over. And so there can be unintended results if the street next over isn’t set up to accommodate that. Because people will just naturally try to take the quickest, shortest distance,” said Kehler.
Coun. Adam Fras noted the issue is not restricted just to Moilliet Street, but to other areas of the city as well, such as Bagshaw Street, Corfield Street and Stanford Avenue.
“I know, just in my area alone, trucks are constantly flying through… It’s dangerous for both bike riders, and pretty well anybody trying to pull out of the side streets… It’s very dangerous, and also a little bit unnerving for a lot of the pedestrians,” said Coun. Mark Chandler.
Both Coun. Teresa Patterson and Coun. Marilyn Wilson agreed that to properly address the issue, a full traffic study would be required.
Before going around the table to vote, Mayne amended that his motion be given a numeric priority after council’s meeting with city staff in June. Further amendments were made for the motion to apply to all city streets, not just side streets, and to look at the speeds of all large trucks, and not assign a specific speed reduction.
Mayne’s amended motion passed 5-2 in favour, with Wilson and Patterson in opposition.