David Neil knows that you can’t stop growth or change, it’s just that the growing numbers of speeding traffic on Hammond Road is getting to him.
“It’s not just the noise, it’s the lack of respect.”
Instead of following the 50 km-h speed limit, vehicles, cars, big trucks and even buses, are putting pedal to the metal and whipping down Hammond Road, putting pedestrians and cyclists at risk, not to mention, annoying the neighbours.
“Buses too, they’re all doing it,” says Neil.
“Everyone is trying to bypass Lougheed Highway. It’s a lot of guys who are late for work … or are working in a work truck … and they’re driving big vehicles and they’re using our street as a shortcut to bypass the Lougheed traffic.
“I’ve seen massive flatdecks with cranes on top, come screaming down doing 85 km-h plus… I just throw my hands up in the air and say, ‘What are you doing man?’ No one stands a chance there.”
Neil has lived in the 19000-block of Hammond Road for five years. His front window looks out on to the road and he recently watched a disabled child try to cross the road.
“No one slowing down for the guy. It’s just a matter of time.”
Three years ago he and his dog were hit by a mini-van, though he wasn’t hurt.
Neil has called Ridge Meadows RCMP and was told police do enforce speed limits on the road.
Neil says he never sees them. “Well, no they don’t.”
Instead, what Neil says he sees is police parking at roadside and doing cellphone or seatbelt checks.
Police instead should just park at the bottom of the hill to catch people speeding down the street or near the chicane near the roundabout beneath Golden Ears Bridge, where vehicles launch themselves westbound.
There are only two crossing lights, one near 200th Street and the other on Bonson Road, he points out.
Albertan and Springdale streets offer excellent radar hideouts and are never used, he points out. Even a concrete divider would help, he adds.
“The cops have got to get some of these guys.”
Pitt Meadows Mayor Deb Walters says it’s not the first time she’s heard complaints about the road.
Police enforcement is usually tied to the volume of calls from an area. RCMP also set up Speed Watch operations along the road.
“They’re very good to respond to those things,” she said of the RCMP.
“Like everything else, we need more people to volunteer for Speed Watch.
“We’re hearing complaints about speeding traffic throughout the entire region. It just seems to be a common experience. I don’t know what more we can do to tell people to slow down.”
Neil said he e-mailed city hall, but Walters said she hasn’t seen it and likely it was forwarded to police.
As long as municipalities to the east of Pitt Meadows keep growing, “People are going to come through our community and they’re going to find the quickest way possible,” Walters said. “That’s just a fact of life.”
There are no plans to widen the road, she added.