Editor: The only way to bring the radar debate to an end is by bringing the radar program to an end, plain and simple.
Unfortunately, a recent letter writer did not contribute anything of substance worth responding to.
So, allow me to use the limited space more productively by sharing some information I received from the Town and thoughts of my own.
The total number of tickets issued at the Bow River Bridge was 2,186. Of these, 1,465 were withdrawn or refunded. Did you get that? You read correctly. In other “words”, 1,465 nullified.
The Town: “... Tickets were issued as motorists were travelling westbound after they had passed the bridge deck and crosswalk and were approaching the 50 km/h zone. Therefore they were legally and technically valid, however, not in the intended location for this zone ...”
However, 721 tickets were issued and upheld. That’s a cool $70,000 to $100,000 in revenue and certainly well worth the blitz. Surely, if those tickets had not been sold the river below would have been red from the blood of all those cyclists mowed down by motorists in a hurry.
The educational and safety impact of the tickets is further enhanced by the fact that the tickets arrive some two weeks after the fact, and charged is not even the driver, but the registered owner of the vehicle and the fine is a “voluntary payment option.”
All in all, to borrow a phrase, mud too thick to drink and too thin to plow.
A business owner once told me there is hardly a week when he is not getting speeding tickets. This without leaving his office. He has a fleet of vehicles driven by employees.
Jumping to conclusions, you may suggest to relocate the speed limit signs to reflect the Town’s expressed intent. However, let’s step back and look at the overall picture.
In my humble opinion, the Town screwed up at the very beginning when they designed the pedestrian bridge and did not add a meter or so in width to accommodate a bicycle lane.
But not all is lost. The bridge is still a full four metres wide. Maybe there is some paint left from all the street markings and throwing in $100,000 Blitz money should be sufficient to draw a line down somewhere in the middle of the bridge deck, separating cyclists and pedestrians and thus removing cyclists from the vehicular bridge altogether.
After all, the cycle path to Banff is 2.5m wide and accommodates relatively speedy two directional traffic. The walkway up Benchlands Trail is 2m wide and is shared by both, cyclists and pedestrians.
Then the obsolete speed limit signs could be put on e-Bay to pay down some of the Town’s debt.
I have suggested this before to no avail. Maybe the time has finally come to get something accomplished and everybody can spend their time and money more productively. Now the puck stops at council chamber. Would councillors have the guts to butcher this golden egg laying goose? Dieter Remppel,
Canmore
