The City of Chestermere is looking for help from residents to find the best solution to improve pedestrian safety on East Lakeview Road.
“We’ve been hearing from residents off and on… about their concerns of the lack of pedestrian crossings in the area, pedestrian walk ways along the road and just access to the regional pathway in the area,” said Acting Senior Manager of Infrastructure Services Greg Perrault.
Perrault said that earlier in the fall, the Mayor along with the Director of Infrastructure services and a City planner met with some area residents to discuss the issue.
“And at that point I guess it was determined that we need to look into this a little bit further,” said Perrault.
A public engagement night was scheduled for Dec. 5 and held at Camp Chestermere.
“It was great,” said Perrault, “we opened the doors at about 5:30…we went till 8 p.m., from the second the doors opened we started seeing the residents come in.”
About 30 people attended the open house.
“People stayed they conversed, talked, we got some good information from them,” he said, “it was a very positive outcome for the event.”
He said that no single issue or suggested solution to improve safety along East Lake Road between East Merganser Drive and Sandpiper Lane.
“It was very much a mixed bag of suggestions and concerns,” said Perrault.
He did say that speed, pedestrian safety were the general themes of the night.
“What we’ve heard from residents is that a lot of children attending school or the field access for different sporting events has increased,” said Perrault.
“They’re really looking for a safer environment for them to reach their destination,” he said.
So far, he isn’t aware of any specific incident or collision that has precipitated the resident’s concerns.
“Kudos to the residents in the area for bringing this up as a potential hazard before it happens,” he said.
“It’s a very proactive approach and we’re really happy to be a part of that.”
The open house is the very first step towards improving the safety of pedestrians along that stretch of road.
“It is very, pretty much the initial step in a few different that we’re going to take moving forward,” he said.
The city plans to continue gathering information from the community into the new year.
Concerned residents can go to the city’s website and leave comments and suggestions on the public engagement page for East Lake Road.
“We’ve targeted the third week of January to kind of gather this information, to collect it and present it to our leadership team here at the city,” said Perrault.
From there, city staff will be able to determine possible solutions and make decisions on how to proceed on the project from there.
“Each different solution will require a different amount of budgeting, amounts of time,” said Perrault.
“Definitely budgeting is going to be the biggest [factor],” he said.
“How big of a project do we want to do to help alleviate the concerns or can some of the simpler solutions be adequate enough to move forward,” said Perrault.
