City hall approves proposal to look at rural road speed-limit changes

Mayor Taso Christopher, (centre) along with city councillors, discuss this year’s budget during a budget meeting on Tuesday. Photo taken by Tyson Nayler, QNet News.

By Tyson Nayler

BELLEVILLE – City council approved a review during Tuesday’s budget meeting that would look at changing the speed limit and reconstruct rural roads within the city’s boundaries.

The proposed project would cost $60,000 for an engineer to survey some of the rural roads in the area, including Thurlow.

“Over the years we’ve had a lot of issues with traffic speed limits in the rural area. A lot of the roadways under the Highway Traffic Act – when it isn’t posted – are 80 km/h and rural roads in the township are down to 50 km/h because we are a municipality,” Joseph Reid, general manager of transportation and operations, said.

Although the proposal was approved, Coun. Mike Graham was one of two members to challenge the review. Graham said that he didn’t understand why an engineer needed to be paid for this project when the city’s staff and police could easily determine the proper speed limits for unmarked roads. 

“Part of the issue is the fact that our roads are set and we’ll need to do reverse engineering,” Reid said in response to Graham’s question. “Many roads are designed by engineers for specific speeds. Because we are doing reverse engineering, we need engineers to survey and determine the proper elevation for curbs and so on. This is the opposite of designing new roads,” said Reid.

The entire proposal covers up to 12o kilometres of unmarked road. This is a problem that city director of engineering and development services Rod Bovay says has been going on for several years now and little progress has been made. Because the proposal is very labour intensive, Bovay said that there isn’t enough time for a staff member to go on the roads and do it. 

There is no timetable set on when the project will be finished, however now that the review has been passed, steps are being taken to improve what many have said are outdated roads and speed limits.