In response to Main Avenue roundabout signs being run down or otherwise physically removed, Sundre’s operations manager was recently asked what plans are in place to prevent further incidents.
Coun. Cheri Funke wondered during the May 7 meeting what Jim Hall had in mind to mitigate the deliberately caused damage.
“We have people who like to run over our roundabout signs. How are you going to stop them from running into the pedestrian signs that cost a lot more money?” she inquired.
Signs are being hit throughout the town, and Hall said he informed the Sundre RCMP about the situation, which within days resulted in the apprehension of an individual who was running over a sign at the intersection of Main Avenue and Second Street northwest.
“So the police are aware,” he said, adding there have also been some cases of “really weird vandalism” in which one sign near ACE Hardware was pulled out — probably by a cable and truck because the motorist could not drive over the sign since there are rocks in front of it.
The operations manager said he has been coordinating with chief administrative officer Linda Nelson to develop delineation features.
“We’re going to be taking Alberta Transportation’s engineering approval to build some small, low-profile type planters that are skid-steer removable for the winter and set them as delineators as well. We can put different devices in front of those signs so that it deters four wheel drives from going over top.”
Additionally, during regular staff hours, the municipal crew will occasionally be keeping an eye out to compile evidence of any damage caused to track incident statistics, he said.
“I don’t believe that people will go out of their way to run over a pedestrian crosswalk sign. The people that are running over the roundabout signs are just very upset with the project, in my view,” he said.
“We’ve had some phone call threats that they don’t like the project and they are going to do what they can to derail it. And that’s just public knowledge, it’s out there, I hear it all the time. So I think they're just targeting those signs.”
When Alberta Transportation deployed the pilot project, the roundabout signs were placed a little precariously for traffic to hit, said Hall, adding he has requested setting them farther back to make hitting them even harder.
“That’s the best we can do at this time — we might put some delineation in front of them.”
