With the calendar turning to September students across the city and region are heading back to school.
Regular readers know this time of year has often meant this space has been dedicated to reminding readers to be extra careful when approaching school zones. It might be an oft reminded thing to do, but it remains something worthy of just a little extra caution every day.
It has been said our children are our greatest resource, and our future, and that is why we need to be reminded of students being on our streets going to, and coming home from school September through June each year.
Safety us certainly part of the reason, a School Travel Planning Initiative by the Yorkton Active Transportation Collaborative and Saskatchewan in motion, is studying a number of concerns as part of its work.
Principals of the four schools involved; Dr. Brass, Columbia, St. Mary’s and St. Paul’s all held a common concern from parents, that being safety, at a meeting held in June on the city. With that in mind all four schools have carried out traffic counts at their schools during the times students are arriving and leaving.
In addition to the high numbers of vehicles on some of the school streets there is a related concern over those which speed through the school zones.
At the same meeting Yorkton Mayor Bob Maloney said Council has discussed the idea of photo radar in school zones in the city to help deal with the speeding issue.
Maloney sees it as a good deterrent.
“People do slow down when their pocketbook is at risk,” he said.
While the overarching initiative is to get students active by walking, or biking to school, which would go a long way toward meeting the suggested minimum in terms of daily physical activity, the impact on safety is equally important.
Certainly a deterrent to school zone speeding is enforcement of speeding listens.
But, we shouldn’t need that. It should be a natural thing for each of us to take a little extra care in areas where our community’s youth are involved. It is a small, but very important thing for each of us to do in being good citizens and more importantly just good human beings.
