North Perth Council recently got an overview of what potential future speed reductions could look like in its towns.
Matt Ropp, the Director of Infrastructure Services, gave a presentation on Monday night regarding urban settlement speed reduction, which he points what was a key priority identified in the 2024 Transportation Master Plan.
"That was one of the one-to-five year priorities that was highlighted is for the municipality to consider reducing speed in our urban areas. It's more like saying 'This is what you should be looking into in the future,'" Ropp said.
Ropp adds staff are very early in the process of looking into where speed reductions might fit, but he notes that there are certain stretches of road in the municipality that they don't have final say on, like Main Street in Atwood, for example.
"The Main Street of Atwood is a provincial highway, so we have limited say of what we can do there. We can't do there what we can on our own roads, like roads that fall under our jurisdiction," he explained.
That part of Highway 23 that runs through Listowel and Atwood, along with some other roadways, are under the Ministry of Transportation's jurisdiction, so the municipality would need approvals to make changes there, Ropp explains.
He adds council has directed staff to gather more data on the matter, and that will include some public outreach and consultations sometime in the future to get a sense of how residents would feel about speed reductions in certain urban zones.
