Parents of children attending the Niverville Middle School can soon breathe a bit easier thanks to additional safety measures the town hopes to implement along Fifth Avenue South in the coming months.
At a public meeting held on April 4, council passed a resolution to reduce the speed limit along Fifth Avenue South between Third and Fourth Streets to 30 kilometres per hour.
The goal is to slow traffic along the busy street which marks the middle school’s east boundary. At the same time, this speed reduction will assist drivers in improving their stopping time as they approach the two new pedestrian crosswalks being proposed for this area.
Earlier this year, council applied to the province for the addition of two new controlled crosswalks here.
If approved, one crosswalk will be installed at the north entrance of Hampton Drive, enhancing the student crossing zone that already exists at the uncontrolled crosswalk at the corner of Spruce Drive.
A second controlled crosswalk has been proposed for the intersection of Hampton Drive South where it intersects with Hespeler Park Drive.
“The Hampton South one won’t happen before sports season, because we need the traffic [count],” says Eric King, the town’s CAO. “If the pedestrian traffic count is high enough, the province will pay for it.”
Thinking strategically, council will initiate pedestrian traffic counts into Hespeler Park in May, at the height of soccer season. If foot traffic is as high as suspected, King is confident that the province will see fit to install a fully controlled crosswalk there.
It’s a similar strategy employed by council for the new flashing crosswalk at Main Street and Second Avenue. Due to pedestrian traffic counts, this crosswalk infrastructure was installed on the province’s dime.
“If we do [the Fifth Avenue traffic counts] in May, the goal is to save us $100,000, potentially,” King says. “If both intersections meet the minimum [pedestrian] threshold, then the province installs them themselves.”
As for timing, King says it’s impossible to say. He’s hopeful that both crosswalks will be ready by the fall of this year, or by the spring of 2024 at the latest.
With all this change in store for Fifth Avenue South, council is recommending one more traffic control strategy that should further enhance safety.
On April 4, council voted in favour of appealing to Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure (MTI) to move the 60 kilometre per hour zone, which currently begins at Fourth Street South, to a more southerly location along Fifth Avenue.
“There isn’t room for adequate spacing to properly transition between the 30 kph zone to the 60 kph zone,” King said. “Therefore, council will respectfully request that MTI contemplate moving the 60 kilometre zone… to 20 meters south of Hespeler Park Drive.”
A secondary benefit to this move, he says, is that it will regulate traffic speed at 50 kilometres per hour as it approaches the Hampton Drive South crosswalk.
Because Fifth Avenue South falls under provincial jurisdiction, this final speed zone change will require provincial approval. Alternatively, school zone speed changes on provincially regulated streets can be authorized on a municipal level, says King.
