Sarnia's mayor is taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to reducing speed limits across the city.
Mike Bradley's comments come after another southwestern Ontario community, Windsor, considers lowering speed limits on residential streets from 50 kilometres per hour to 40 kilometres per hour -- London implemented a similar change last year.
Bradley said any idea is worth looking at.
"I'm quite skeptical about it to be honest, because we have a difficult enough time in the community right now enforcing speed limits, and to reduce them significantly throughout the entire community would bring a great deal of enforcement issues forward," he said. "I also respect the idea that we need to do something because speeding has become the number one, two or three concern when we're doing our police business planning every few years."
Mayor Bradley said the two keys points are whether it's enforceable and effective.
He also said it's good to make people aware that they shouldn't be speeding.
"But it's a constant, and I find it very ironic, it's almost a golden rule, in any neighbourhood that asks for speed enforcement, about 70, 75 per cent of the people that end up being charged are from that very neighbourhood."
Bradley said if council wanted to explore reduced speed limits, the first step would likely be to ask for a report from staff to study the effectiveness and how it was enforced in London and potentially Windsor.
"We're a little bit different because, in our system here, any fine revenue that's generated will go to the County of Lambton, in London and Windsor, it would go directly into that community to help with enforcement," said Bradley. "So I'd like to see what happens there. It seems to be a trendy issue right now, but the reality is the Sarnia Police Service struggles now just to enforce the speed limits, never mind decreasing them right across the community."