PUSLINCH ‒ Lake Road will not qualify for enhanced OPP enforcement despite protests from residents to return the alleged speeding hot spot back to its original speed limit.
In a new report not yet released to the public, a remote Black Cat radar device installed on Lake Road during the last 10 days of October found 85 per cent of 26,030 vehicles scanned were driving 70 to 79 km/hour and "does not warrant enhanced enforcement."
This follows members of the Lake Road Community Committee protesting county council's decision to increase the speed limit of a section of Lake Road from 50 km/h to 70 km/h in September.
According to Police Services Board Committee chair County Coun. Earl Campbell, the OPP installed the Black Cat last month to show residents "we're listening" after the OPP "wasn't satisfied" by county engineer Don Kudo's recommendation to let the speed limit marinate for a year before compiling any data.
But "on a cautionary note," Campbell also said preparing this report was time-consuming and asked his fellow councillors to keep this in mind when making similar requests in the future.
"(OPP Inspector Steve Thomas) likely spent two hours flipping through those 100 and some odd reports to recategorize and give Puslinch this breakdown," said Campbell. "I'm not saying it's not a worthwhile exercise to do but we need to be careful what we ask for because some things are very easy to find and others aren't."
So far in 2023, 23.4 per cent of specific traffic complaints in Puslinch have been related to speeding.
While this data has only been shared with Puslinch Mayor James Seeley and Puslinch County Coun. Matthew Bulmer so far, it will be presented at an upcoming meeting in Puslinch and again on a county level in January.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program
