Monctonians call for stoplights on Millennium Boulevard to stop speeders

People living and working on Moncton's Millennium Boulevard are calling for better safety measures to control speeders.

Katlyn Breneol and Tommy Driscoll tried to turn into their driveway Friday morning, when a driver tailgating them at a fast speed caused them to crash their car.

"I almost got rear-ended, I had to turn quick and hit the fence," Driscoll said. ​

Breneol said instead of slowing down, the driver honked at them.

She said traffic on the boulevard has become worse over the three years they've lived on the road.

"We've been having issues with drivers, and speeding and not being very cautious of other people that live on the road or who use this road whether it be work," she said.

In 2016, Breneol said they raised concerns to police. She said the RCMP advised them to set up a camera and record license plate numbers and send that information to them.

"But that shouldn't be our job to do," she said.

Sgt. Mario Fortin with the RCMP said police take complaints seriously and adjust patrols to "hot spots." However, he said police can't be everywhere at once patrolling the city.

"We would target the specific location, and quite often when we move out of there and focus on other area of the city then bad habits sometime take over again and then we come back and do sporadic checks."

Safety issues

Breneol said a lot of the traffic is due to the busyness of the Moncton SportsDome. She said much of the problem is there are no streetlights, speed bumps or many stop signs to deter drivers to slow down.

"All there is halfway between Millennium Boulevard [are] two signs for a crosswalk and a crosswalk but there are no lights at the crosswalk."

She said someone had previously been killed at the crosswalk.

"I don't want that to have to happen to someone else before they actually do something about this road."

Breneol and Driscoll said all they want is for the city to install a stoplight, speed bumps, signage, or a speed limit change to control speeders.

"Anything to slow people down, cause there's absolutely nothing on this stretch to slow anyone down — nothing."

They also said more police presence would help as well. ​

Randy Theriault is the owner of Power Plus Tool Sales and Service located along the boulevard and said the road is unsafe for drivers.

"Speed is a factor there's no stop signs, there's no set of lights where I believe, and I think a lot of the residents in the area believe, there should be."

'Whopping speed'

He said some of his clients have complained about accessibility to be able to pull in and out of his driveway safely.

"People treat this road like a highway," Theriault said about the road from Vaughan Harvey to the Moncton Coliseum.

He said he's seen a few accidents over the years because people are driving down "at a whopping speed," and believes drivers often forget there is a residential section of the road.

"Once they start from the Coliseum and down where there is no houses at that point they feel as though they can drive 100 kilometres possibly more per hour where it should be reduced to 50."

Breneol and Theriault echoed similar concerns about the boulevard during the winter time.

"It's 10 times worse in the winter time," Breneol said.

For Theriault, he has to ask his snow removal company to take away snow banks as far as they can because of the visual problems around the corner

No one from the City of Moncton was available to comment.