City poised for pathways safety blitz
Peace officers will soon be out and about on Calgary pathways for their annual safety blitz.
With the weather warming, the city will host public engagement events on major pathway routes to promote safety.
“We are going out along pathways handing out free goodies to people,” said Fausto Ricioppo, community standards sergeant with the City of Calgary.
“Instead of handing out tickets, we want to educate them, because we know we are going to have a busy summer. We want to give a friendly reminder to be safe on the pathways.”
Among the goodies are bike bells. Ricioppo says they are mainly looking at cyclists speeding along pathways, ensuring dogs are kept on a leash and that people generally follow rules on the pathways.
In years past, Ricioppo said Calgarians have done a pretty good job at following the rules.
“It’s been pretty good but we have our ups and downs,” he said.
“This time of season we get a few complaints coming in, so we just want to remind the public that when you are out there, safety, safety, safety. We will have our peace officers out there and we will be on laser detection watching for speeding or aggressive cyclists.”
While bicycles don’t have speedometers, Ricioppo said cyclists need to be aware of how fast they are going by just going with the flow of pathway traffic.
Officers who pull over cyclists won’t always give them a ticket.
“It’s at the discretion of the officers — it could be a verbal warning, it could go to a written warning or it could goto a summons ,” said Ricioppo.
Jocelyn Campbell walks the pathway every other day with her dog and says she never has issues.
“I’ll walk the dog or do errands — I live in Hillhurst so it’s really easy to get downtown,” said Campbell as she walked her dog near Eau Claire Market.
“I always just stay to the right, like when you drive, and pass on the left. It works well.”