Letter to the editor: Address the root causes

The City of Steinbach has recently announced a partnership with Ste. Anne Police to increase random and unannounced patrols along Main Street in an effort to curb speeding and noisy vehicles.

It’s understandable why enforcement is seen as a practical solution. It’s visible, immediate, and signals that action is being taken; but it only addresses the symptoms, not the root cause. It focuses on individual behaviours like speeding, loud exhaust and aggressive driving, without asking why those behaviours are so common in the first place. And it relies on the assumption that the only way to keep motorists within the speed limit is by issuing tickets, fines and penalties. This raises an important question: why do we treat low speeds as an enforcement issue, when we all understand that high speeds are a design issue?

Consider a hypothetical scenario. The speed limit on Main Street is suddenly raised to 100 km/h overnight, with no change to the road itself. On-street parking remains, intersections stay the same, and pedestrians continue to use crosswalks. Would we expect police to ticket motorists for driving too slowly? Of course not. Everyone would recognize this as an obviously unsafe mismatch between street design and posted speed.

This illustrates a basic truth: if we want traffic to move quickly while remaining relatively safe, we design the road to support that goal, as is the case with any major highway. So why don’t we apply the same logic in reverse? If we want slower, quieter, safer streets, we should design them in such a way that encourages that behaviour naturally without the need for a constant police presence.

The reality is that Main Street wasn’t built for slow, community-focused traffic. It was designed to function as a provincial trunk highway. A wide, four-lane corridor built for efficiency, capable of moving everything from commuters to livestock trailers from one end of the city to the other with minimal delay. It’s a design that invites speed and noise and danger. After the sun goes down and regular traffic thins out, the street opens up to become a playground.

If we truly want a calmer, safer Main Street that reflects the heart of our community, then we need to look beyond reactionary enforcement. The design of the street must change. Until that happens, we’re asking the police to solve a problem borne of poor planning, and that only better planning can fix.

Chris Krahn

Steinbach, MB