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A community group is advocating to make the streets in Eugenia more safe.
Eugenia District Community Improvement Association Chair Ron Barnett says the group is encouraging the municipality to adopt traffic calming measures in Eugenia, specifically along Inkerman Street and Canrobert Street.
This comes as the municipality is currently looking to the reconstruction and resurfacing of local roads.
Last month, council considered three options for reconstructing Inkerman and Canrobert Streets, these include adopting a new traffic calming policy, consider physical traffic calming measures, and apply for provincial funding to implement a traffic calming program.
The group in response recommended installing paved space for pedestrians, looking into new stop signs, and hold a public consultation meeting.
Council chose to have municipal staff look into additional traffic calming measures and come up with a plan to later be presented to residents.
“That is pretty much exactly what we were looking for and hoping for,” says Barnett.
This comes after a Pedestrian Safety Study was commissioned by the municipality in 2023 in response to high traffic speeds and a lack of pedestrian infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of reaching Vision Zero.
Vision Zero is a global road safety strategy with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
“My group has been lobbying council for a few years now about traffic calming measures along Inkerman especially and also at the intersection at Canrobert. Canrobert is a very popular street, it’s the one that leads to the boat launch, we get a lot of visitors in the summer time especially using those streets and Inkerman is also a paved road which is a fast, quick way through Eugenia and tends to be used in that manner, but it goes directly through a residential neighbourhood and we want people to slow down and realize that there are many pedestrians and bicyclists that use that road. In 2022, there was a serious accident at that intersection which put three people in hospital and killed another one. It really seriously affected the community and we really wanted do something about this section of roadway,” says Barnett.
Barnett does not imagine they will have a clear path forward to making the streets in Eugenia more safe until the 2026 municipal budget is set.
“Which probably means that we wont get this reconstruction done in 2026, but hopefully we can get a plan back from staff and it gets presented to council and approved so that it can all be presented within the next few months. I would really like to get this done sooner than later, but I want to make sure that we take our time and get it right,” says Barnett.