Community safety zone approved for Blackwell Road in Sarnia

Blackwell Road is getting a community safety zone, where speeding fines would be doubled.

City council voted for the measure April 17 after safety calls from resident Scott Kember and a recent collision involving a child.

Exactly where the zone will be on the nearly six-kilometre roadway between Michigan Avenue to east of Telfer Road still needs to be determined, said city engineering and operations general manager David Jackson.

Details, including whether there would be any speed limit changes — other city community safety zones are 40 km/h — are expected at council’s May 15 meeting when the bylaw is up for approval, he said.

It’s the city’s 10th community safety zone, but the first not near a school or hospital.

Staff recommendations to this point have been to areas only near schools or hospitals because of the number of complaints about speeding throughout the community and requests for staff to do something, Jackson said.

“If we have no criteria, then it’s hard for staff to respond to these requests,” he said. “Or we would just have to approve every request that comes in.”

If zones are too prevalent, the impact also is diminished, he said.

In 2020, Sarnia adopted a slowdown sign campaign to help address the then-10 to 15 speeding complaints a month the city was receiving.

Council voted down a city-wide speed limit proposal last year after public feedback was strongly opposed.

Also approved at the meeting, meanwhile, were more share-the-road signs for Blackwell, a review and potentially $20,000 in extra lighting at the Blackwell and Telfer intersection, and future consideration for sidewalks or paved shoulders — where none exist along the historically rural stretch between Modeland and Telfer roads—whenever the road is eventually due for work.

That provision also would be part of the city’s active transportation master plancurrently being developed, council voted.

One aspect of that plan would be always to consider how to improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians when looking at road work, staff said in a report.

“Doing so inevitably increases the cost, complexity and time on a project, but this needs to be acceptable in order to impose a true shift toward becoming a multi-modal and accessible city,” the report says.

Kember said he’s pleased his requests for improved safety were taken seriously.

“It seems like there’s lots of interest in people improving bike safety in Sarnia,” he said.

Blackwell, despite its safety shortcomings, often is packed with cyclists taking advantage of a relatively long roadway almost uninterrupted by stop signs or traffic signals, he said.

“On a weekend, there will be 150 to 200 people biking on that road, easy,” he said.

Hopes are for safety improvements along the whole roadway, but especially between Modeland and Telfer where sidewalks and paved shoulders are absent, he said.

Council’s discussion, before approving the community safety zone, focused on why there are fewer cyclists in Sarnia compared to decades ago, with theories ranging from a cultural shift to the size and number of motor vehicles impacting safety.

People living in the area want to be able to cycle and walk safely, said Coun. Anne Marie Gillis, who called for the community safety zone that was ultimately approved in a 7-2 vote. Mayor Mike Bradley and Coun. George Vandenberg voted against.

“You have all these competing interests but what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide a safe, usable community,” Gillis said.

count. Brian White, arguing a major impact on safety and people’s willingness to cycle is the size of vehicles on the roads, said council needs to adapt.

“We have to change the way that we manage our road and the way that we build our road and we have to accommodate for that,” he said.

Later in the meeting, Vandenberg was proposing another community safety zone, this one on Colborne Road, between Cathcart Boulevard and Lakeshore Road, but paused — at Bradley’s urging — to give more time next month for a discussion about policy.

A city speed limit review found the vast majority of vehicles traveling that stretch of Colborne were within 10 kilometers of the posted speed limit, but “speaking to the people in that area, I think they would prefer (a community safety zone),” Vandenberg said.