I share Linda Grantham’s concerns about speeding in Langford and the high risk it poses to our children.
I live in a 24-hour 30 km/h zone, where hundreds of students either walk to school or are waiting for buses. In the past six years I have learned a few things. Maybe 10 out of 1,000 cars actually observe the speed limit. Most go 30 km/h over. Unlike View Royal and Colwood which utilize stop signs and speed humps, Langford’s engineering department doesn’t believe in either solution. The key here is that Langford doesn’t fund an RCMP traffic division, so without tickets, people have learned speed signs are simply a suggestion.
I have spent six years campaigning the City’s engineering department, council, West Shore RCMP’s community policing division and the Capital Region’s Integrated Road Safety Unit and ICBC for a solution to our neighbourhood speeding problem. The only solution ever provided was that residents could rent a speed sign, take time off work and monitor the speed sign themselves, but still couldn’t ticket people.
For the intersection of Goldstream Avenue and Jacklin Road, if Langford actually connected Leigh Road with Langford Parkway, a project planned in 2008 and supposed to be complete by 2015, the majority of highway bound traffic could be diverted.
Another easy solution is an advance light for traffic turning left onto Goldstream off Jacklin. The increase in straight traffic makes it difficult to turn, causing frustrations and running the lights. Langford has approved three main shopping centres off Jacklin and a YMCA, bringing in millions in tax revenue and thousands of people, but nothing has been addressed to keeping pedestrians safe from the increase in speeding cars.
They need to take some of that extra tax money and increase funding for an RCMP speed division.
Lara AllsoppLangford
