City gets green light to study reducing speed limits on residential streets

Saskatoon will dig a little deeper into the idea of lowering speed limits on neighbourhood streets.

The Standing Policy Committee on Transportation gave the go-ahead to administration to develop a framework for revising speed limits on neighbourhood streets, school zones and playground zones.

The city will now go out and talk with community associations, school boards and police about speed reductions.

A report submitted to the committee Tuesday said reducing speeds would increase pedestrian safety and add less than a minute to the average commute.

Coun. Bev Dubois said so far this is only an exploration.

"The reality is we are not talking about reducing our speed limit to 30, this is all just in education mode," Dubois said.

The committee ended up splitting its recommendation into three parts: one to look at reducing speeds on neighbourhood streets, one to look at schools and playgrounds and a third to look at reducing speeds in the Nutana Suburban area because of the high percentage of seniors in the area.

The lone councillor to vote against looking at reducing speeds on neighbourhood streets was Coun. Randy Donhauer.

"I don't see a big public call for us to amend our speed limits," Donhauer said.

"I just haven't seen a call for it.  think there is more of a call for enforcement. More people want to see the police out there more and I support that."

No councillor on the committee expressed outright support to reduce speeds to 30 km/h.

In delivering the report to the committee, transportation and engineering manager Jay Magus said cities such as Calgary are in the process of implementing a 30 km/h limit on residential streets. In Saskatchewan, Warman and Prince Albert have 40 km/h speed limits.

Dubois said the next report by administration needs to be concise and to the point.

"Whatever we may do in the future I want us to keep it simple, easy for all ages to understand."