Fixed-Position Speed Cameras in Langley City. Most neighbourhoods 50% support except Nicomekl and Alice Brown

Since I’ve been on Langley City Council, one of the common requests I receive is to address speeding. Speeding is a leading cause of fatalities and injuries in BC. For people who are walking, hit by someone driving 30km/h, the person walking has a 90% chance of surviving. At 45km/h, they would have a 50/50 chance of surviving. Over 80km/h, death is inevitable.

Along 200th Street and 208th Street, people regularly drive around 70km/h. These are streets where people walking cross, including children that need to get to school.

The best way to reduce speeding is to design roads that naturally cause people to slow down. There are many examples of traffic calming now in Langley City. Sometimes enforcement is the only option.

RCMP are expensive and cannot enforce speed limits 24/7. In some jurisdictions, they install clearly marked, fixed-position speed cameras to enforce speed limits where people commonly disregard the limit.

Langley City does not have the authority to install these cameras. Only the province can do that.

Regardless, I ask people to complete a survey answering the questions, “Would you support clearly marked, fixed-position speed cameras to enforce the speed limit along 200th Street and 208th Street within Langley City?”

The following map is based on the people who responded to the survey.

50% of the survey respondents in the Douglas, Blacklock, Simonds, and Uplands neighbourhoods supported the idea of installing fixed-position speed cameras.

Only 25% of the survey respondents in the Nicomekl neighbourhood supported the idea of fixed-position speed cameras. None of the survey respondents in the Alice Brown neighbourhoods supported the idea.

Based on those results, It would seem that 208th Street would be a corridor to test the effectiveness of fixed-position speed cameras at one or two places where high speeds are typical.

As I noted earlier, Langley City has no authority to install fixed-position speed cameras. Still, as the province looks to improve road safety, they will likely look at new approaches to make our streets safer.