The city of Regina will soon have new school zone speed limits in place.

CAA Saskatchewan's Christine Niemczyk was part of a committee with the city of regina that had been looking into the matter for three years and also a member of CAA's own school zone safety committee.

Results from surveys at a handful of schools in the Regina area with the CAA committee indicated there were a lot of infractions of school zone safety throughout a typical school day.

CAA polling in the areas also indicated that parents of young children have noticed an increase in unsafe driving practices through school zones.

“Culminating overall through the surveys, the audits and the assessments, we knew that 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. was acceptable,” Niemczyk said.

Regina isn't the first municipality to go down to 30 km/h for school zones, Niemczyk said.

“I know that 30 k is also used in other centres, and I believe that’s what they did as well, is talk with Saskatoon They talked to Calgary and Edmonton. There are other municipalities or are looking at it. Regina may not be the first in Saskatchewan to do that.”

Saskatoon's school zones are at 30 km/h but only from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Niemczyk is happy with the decision of council, which means that school zones in Regina exist around schools for 365 days a year, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“We know... to go through a school zone at 40 km/h, takes 14 seconds of a drivers time,” she said. “At 30 k, it takes 18 seconds.”

Niemczyk said they don't expect that 18 seconds would cause anyone any hardship.

“If it only takes us 18 seconds to go through a school zone or a playground, it’s time well spent.”

She said she is very pleased with the decision by Regina city council, which looked into other centres to see that they were doing with their school zones.

Anyone curious about more information on school zone safety assessments can go to CAAsk.ca/schoolzonesafety.