People in the community of Bankview are fed up with drivers speeding through their community so they took an opportunity to take matters into their own hands and brought out the paint.

Families in the area painted a “SLOW” sign on 19 Avenue SW in big, yellow letters to remind motorists to take their time when driving down streets in their community.

Community members sprayed the message on the road during the area’s Ladybug Festival along with fun murals for the kids.

“It was about a week ago that we had a street party so we closed down the street with permission from the city and took some initiative to do some traffic calming measures while we were there so we painted some ‘SLOW’ signs on either end of the boulevard and also some murals of lad bugs in the middle of the street Just to try and get traffic to calm down. There’s been a lot of through traffic coming through here, there’s 20 kids who live on this block and it’s a very busy street,” said Greg Markholm, Bankview resident.

They decided to leave the ‘SLOW’ signs on the road after the event and thought they had the speeding problem licked until the city stepped in.

“As a community, because we are very close on this street, we decided to get together and do something for the kids. However the bureaucracy of the city decided that, I guess, it wasn’t up to par so they’ve removed it.’” said Markholm.

The city says the bottom line is it is illegal and on Monday crews blasted the paint away.

“It’s illegal. There’s a provincial traffic safety act that says Joe resident anywhere in the province of Alberta cannot put up signs that citizens out driving could potentially construe as actual signs,” said Sean Somers with the City of Calgary.

The city says is has done a study to see if traffic calming is needed in the area and a spokesperson for the city says they don’t think it is warranted.

(With files from Brad MacLeod)