It's been about 15 months since the City of Steinbach asked the Manitoba Highway Traffic Board to reduce the speed on part of Highway #52 West and it has still not heard an answer. Troy Warkentin, the city's Chief Administrative Officer, explains what has transpired since city council passed a resolution January 17, 2017, asking the board to extend the 50 kilometre per hour zone further west, past Industrial Road.

"The City of Steinbach did take that vote of council and formally made the request of the province and the Highway Traffic Board shortly thereafter. To date, we haven't received confirmation that the matter has been dealt with yet."

He notes the Highway Traffic Board did acknowledge it had received the letter.

"It was acknowledged and the city also just sent a request out earlier this winter, January I believe, asking for a further update from the province if there had been any decisions reached on this file."

Warkentin says it is possible the Highway Traffic Board has a lengthy backlog of requests to deal with. He notes the original letter also requested traffic signals at Highway #52 and Industrial and those were approved earlier this year.

We have put in several calls to the Highway Traffic Board but have so far not received an answer as to what is taking so long and when a decision might come out on the request to reduce the speed there.

There have been numerous collisions at that intersection in the past fifteen months including a fatal collision 11 days ago on March 16th.