Council approves speed reduction on 2nd Street in Picture Butte

By Nikki Jamieson
Sunny South News

The speed limit has been reduced along a industrial roadway in Picture Butte.

During their regular May 25 meeting, Picture Butte town council reviewed a proposed speed change for two streets in town.

2nd Street South and Railway Avenue in town are zoned for Industrial use, and are utilized by a number of businesses. The roads are unpaved gravel roads, and require more maintenance then their asphalt counterparts. While grading is performed on a regular basis to take care of rut and potholes that may develop on the roads, there if a trend of drivers increasing there speeds once the conditions of the roads have been improved, which quickly degrades them back to their previous condition. The roads also have regular Super-B semi-truck traffic, which cause a large impact on the roads.

“I get quite a few complaints from tenants on the properties and the property owners. The condition of the road, I had it graded two weeks ago, having it graded tomorrow mostly because of the rain that we’ve had, but I noticed the Super-Bs that come in, not to pick on anyone in particular, when they come off the highway, they seem to maintain quite a bit of their momentum, and it really does a job on the roads,” said Chad Parsons, director of operations for the town. “One passover from those vehicles has the impact of about 1,500 passes from a passenger car. So it degrades the condition of the road quite a bit and quite fast.

“Unfortunately, there more than just that wrong with the road. There’s drainage issues. We’re bit by bit trying to remedy but nevertheless, right now, this is one way of approaching this, to at least lower the speed limit until we can have a paved road there one day.”

By reducing the speed limit on those roads from 50 km/hr to 30 km/hr, it will help the roads stay in a better condition for longer after grading occurs.

Section 3.1 of the town’s Traffic Bylaw states that the standard maximum speed for vehicles within the town limits is 50 km/hr, and section 3.2 states that council may allow for signs to be posted changing the speed limit for a location.

Property owners of the lots along the roads were canvassed, and those who replied were in favour of the speed reduction.

Council passed a motion that the maximum vehicular speed limit for 2nd Street be set at 30 km/hr and that the speed limit come into effect as of June 1, 2020.

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