By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

A St. Laurent resident has asked the borough council to set the speed limit at 30 km/hr on all residential streets throughout the borough. The resident said the speed limit is 30 km/hr in areas around schools and parks.

“Why should we accept less safety in the places kids live?” the email read at the May council meeting says. “Considering the ever increasing size and power of cars today, shouldn’t we be reducing speed limits to compensate for this?” The resident also called for appropriate enforcement and traffic calming measures on the residential streets.

Speed limits have been reduced on numerous streets in Montreal, including to as little as 20 km/hr in the Lajoie area of Outremont. Also, pretty much all of Bertrand in St. Laurent, between Côte Vertu and St. Louis, is 30 km/hr.

Mayor Alan DeSousa responded that the borough is always “questioning ourselves, what is the right speed limit in terms of ensuring safety.”Just reducing the speed limit, we have already done that once for arterial, neighbourhoods and school zoning, so we’ve gone through that experience and an awful lot of work to put that through,” the Mayor added. “But we’ve noticed that just lowering the speed limit as a measure, in and of itself, is pretty limited, and so that’s why what we’re doing is focusing our efforts on traffic calming measures in different communities and other measures to make sure pedestrian and cyclist safety, and your kids’ safety, is enhanced.”

DeSousa also said that “if we get to the point that we think, after those measures, there’s a need again to lower limits, council is open to consider it.” n