KITCHENER - The City of Kitchener is considering lowering speed limits to 40 km/h along city streets painted with sharrows.

The recommendation is in a report Kitchener councillors will consider at the city's community and infrastructure services committee on Aug. 21.

"At the end of the day, it's really about safety," said Danny Pimentel, who is in charge of promoting cycling at the city. "The whole idea of lower speed limits is to reduce the potential of serious or fatal injuries."

The city first introduced sharrows downtown along King Street in 2014, and now has them on about six kilometres of roadway on 15 different streets, mostly in or near the core.

The painted symbols - two chevrons painted on the roadway above a bicycle symbol inside a bright green rectangle, or a black one in heritage districts - are usually painted on roads where there isn't enough room for a bike lane, and are meant to remind drivers and cyclists to share the road.

While sharrows may be unfamiliar to many drivers, speed limit signs are something every driver understands, said Barry Cronkite, Kitchener's interim manager of transportation planning.

"The speed limits bring some awareness to drivers that they're entering this shared area and we want you to drive slowly and be vigilant," Pimentel said.

"The intent is to bring a higher awareness that cyclists are present," said Cronkite. "We're trying to drive that operating speed down where we expect that shared use."

He doesn't know of any other cities that have required lower speeds where there are sharrows, and acknowledged that research has shown that simply posting lower speed limits without changing anything else in the road's design does little to change driver behaviour.

However, sharrows are generally used on narrow roads and roads that see less traffic, Cronkite said.

"Reducing the speed to 40 is more a reflection of the way the street is operating anyway."

The changes are based on the 2012 review by the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario of all cycling deaths in the previous five years, Pimentel said. The review found that most cyclist deaths happened in cities, in daylight, in dry, clear conditions. And it recommended that streets be designed for all road users, not just drivers.

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If council approves the change, the new speed limits could be in place by the fall, Cronkite said. The change would also mean that any roads where the city decides in future to install sharrows would automatically be posted with a 40 km/h speed limit.

The new policy wouldn't apply to Jubilee Drive, through Victoria Park, where speed limits would remain at 30 km/h.