Stop signs just not cutting it

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Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Photo by Tony Eu. One of the four intersections surrounding Hazel M. Kellington Elementary School. The four intersections are controlled by four-way stops signs, but some are saying they aren’t enough.

By Tony Eu

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Living on one of the corners around Hazel M. Kellington Elementary School (HMK), Jim Suski has seen people run the stop signs at both corners without slowing down. Now, he and several other community members are trying to do something about the traffic behaviour around the school. He believes implementing a school zone speed limit reduction to 30 km/h could help prevent accidents around the Neepawa school. 

The change would have to be implemented by the Town, as the school board has no authority over road regulations. 

“I’m not saying it’s deliberate,” Suski notes. “We’ve seen [people] go through our stop sign and then realize, ‘Oh, there’s a stop sign,’ and then stop at the next one. But that still gives them enough time to reach 50 km/h.”

Suski noted that his wife had approached a town councilor about the issue and was told that the four way stop signs were enough to keep people from going too fast in the area, since it’s a narrow block. “Well that’s going east and west. North and south, that’s a long block, you can easily reach 50 km/h in that block. If a kid’s got a pretty fast car, he can reach [that] in the narrow block too,” Suski countered. That’s assuming that the individuals even stop.

“There was a young girl on a bike, she just went through the stop sign and about a minute later, a car went through the stop sign without stopping,” Suski mentioned. “A minute, that’s not a very big time frame, all it would’ve taken was for her to maybe stop and tie her shoe up quick and there would have been an accident,” he added, stressing the danger of people forgetting to stop or simply deciding not to.

Suski believes that decreasing the speed limit from 50 km/h to 30 km/h with a designated school zone would greatly reduce the risk of accidents. “From 50 [km/h] to 30 [km/h], that’s a big difference in speed, that gives you a lot of reaction time,” he stressed.

“We have worked with the Town of Neepawa in the past when traffic flow around schools was a concern,” said Jason Young, the superintendent for Beautiful Plains School Division (BPSD). “The Town made efforts to help ensure the safety of students by erecting four-way stops at all four corners surrounding Hazel M. Kellington.”

Young added, “The Board of Trustees is in constant discussions around the safety of our students. With the increased traffic and student population around our Neepawa schools, it was suggested that a reduction in the speed limit from 50 km/h to 30 km/h could increase the safety of our students.”

In order to accomplish that, the board has sent a letter to the Town of Neepawa to open up the conversation on implementing a school zone.

Allan Hanke, the principal of HMK, noted that, “We’re not seeing tons and tons of speeding, but it does happen.” His thoughts on a reduced speed zone were that, “If it’s going to help people to slow down, it’s a great thing. We just want it to be safe for the kids, that’s what it’s all about.”

Though a speed limit reduction won’t make the streets around HMK accident proof, they will make them considerably safer. With that in mind and the voices of both the community and the school board behind the cause, hopefully town council is able to implement this much desired safety feature in a timely manner.