B.C. reining in drivers to put brakes on crashes
Drive to Coast will take a few minutes more as Connector among highways where speed limits will be trimmed
Not so fast. Driving to Vancouver from Kelowna will take five minutes and 30 seconds longer with the provincial government lowering the speed limit on the Okanagan Connector by 10 km/h.
The speed reduction, among 15 to be implemented provincewide, is said by the government to be a safety initiative after the higher limits were associated with increased crash rates.
“We know people want to get where they’re going quickly. Our job is to help make sure they also get there safely,” Minister of Transportation Claire Trevina said in a release.
The limit has been trimmed to 110 km/h from 120 km/h on the portion of the Okanagan Connector, otherwise known as Highway 97C, between Peachland and Aspen Grove.
Between Aspen Grove and Merritt, the speed limit will be reduced to 100 km/h from 110 km/h.
Assuming a driver obeys the posted limit, the travel time to Merritt from Peachland now will be 65 minutes, compared to 59 minutes and 30 seconds when the limits were higher.
When the speed limit on the Connector was raised, there was a 33 per cent increase in speedrelated collisions, according to a Ministry of Transportation statistical analysis.
However, the speed limit on the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt will stay at 120 km/h, as the government says there has been no increase in collisions on that highway since the limit was raised.
In the Okanagan, the only other highway where the speed limit will be reduced is 97A between Sicamous and Grindrod. The speed limit has been cut back to 80 km/h from 90 km/h.
Overall, a three-year review found there has been an 11.2 per cent increase in serious collisions on those highway segments where speed limits were raised in 2014 by the previous Liberal government.
“It’s horrible, the fact that there have been serious accidents and there have been deaths,” Trevina told reporters.
Kelowna-Mission Liberal MLA Steve Thomson said those higher speed limits were based on input from ministry traffic engineers and included wide public consultation.
“To allege, as the minister of highways seems to be doing, that we are somehow responsible for the increased number of collisions is not appropriate,” Thomson said. “Safety is our priority, too. If the science indicates now that there needs to be a change in the speed limits, then we certainly respect the work of the traffic engineers.”
The speed limits will not be reduced on other Okanagan highways where they were increased four years ago. These include:
— On Highway 33, between Black Mountain and McCulloch Road, and between Rock Creek and Westbridge, the speed limit will stay at 100 km/h.
— On Highway 97, between Swan Lake and Monte Creek, the limit will remain at 90 km/h.
— On Highway 97A, between Armstrong and Enderby, the speed limit will stay at 100 km/h.
The speed limit on the Trans Canada Highway between Salmon Arm and Golden also will stay at 100 km/h.
In 2014, the Liberals increased the speed limits on 33 highway segments totalling 1,300 kilometres in length.
A review of serious-accident statistics for those highways since then, the NDP says, has found that crashes increased on 15 of those segments. These are the highway sections where speed limits are being reduced.
Ian Tootill, co-founder of the group Safety by Education Not Speed Enforcement, said lowering the limit is based on oversimplified data by an irresponsible group of academics and health-care professionals.
“The whole group of people that have input on this, that are in the so-called stakeholders’ group, are all people with a dog in the race,” he said.
Truckers don’t want people driving faster than them, and police are writing speeding tickets for the profits of municipalities, Tootill said.