Fifty-six per cent of commercial vehicle inspections by Airdrie’s Municipal Enforcement failed the inspections in 2023.
“Although our numbers are alarming, they're in line with the provincial average,” said Brian Rayner, Airdrie Municipal Enforcement (AME) team leader, in an interview. “This is not a unique Airdrie thing.”
During the final Municipal Policing Advisory Board meeting on Nov. 23, he said numbers for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) were bad last year as well, and it remains a priority.
According to the presentation, the City currently has three officers trained to inspect commercial vehicles.
He went on to say that in 2023 out of 79 inspections only 10 per cent passed, with 56 per cent being removed automatically and the other 34 per cent had deficiencies they had to correct and report back.
“Going forward next year this is still going to be a major priority for us to set up more check stops, more inspections, with our partner agencies outside, with the [scale] sheriff, RCMP, and Calgary Police Services (CPS),” said Rayner.
Airdrie’s safety officer, Carlo Margherit said the reason behind this high failure is that a lot of times they don't go through the inspection scales, and take other legal trucking routes.
“That's why we're getting a lot of failures because they're just small companies not doing proper maintenance,” he said.
While it’s legal to take another trucking route, it’s illegal to go by an open scale, and officers can also hand out tickets if drivers admit to taking a different route to avoid scales.
Margherit said they’ve done targeted enforcement on backroads, and have also set up checkstops on other trucking routes around Airdrie.
Rayner added that a full inspection is time consuming, which means that at a checkstop, two officers might only be able to inspect two or three trucks in a day.
“When we deal with the truck we try to educate at that point,” Margherit said. “We also sometimes contact the owner of the company and educate them as well.”
Trucks can either pass an inspection, fail, or require attention.
Required attention refers to problems that need to be fixed but don’t pose a safety concern, while failures always pose a safety concern.
“If one brake light goes out, that's required attention but if they have no brake light that's a fail, they can't carry on,” Margherit said.
“We know stuff happens to trucks. They do have air leaks and to put a truck out of service for brakes, they have to have 20 per cent of brakes not working.”
He added that failures mean severe issues.
According to Rayner, the scale sheriff also patrols the backroads, with joint enforcement from the Calgary Police Service (CPS) and the RCMP.
Coun. Ron Chapman noted that the officials from Airdrie have made it known they want the weigh scale to be moved farther north as drivers are avoiding the road in a recent meeting with Premier Danielle Smith, Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver, and Infrastructure Minister Peter Guthrie.
Airdrie Municipal Enforcement update
According to the presentation at the Municipal Policing Advisory Board, moving violations, non-moving violations, and traffic safety act offenses increased in 2023.
That coincided with the addition of one peace officer and the traffic safety officer, and was an expected result.
“We've seen about a 20 per cent increase in tickets given,” said Rayner. “One thing that you probably will notice from 2021 to 2023 is that general bylaw files have decreased significantly”
AME also reported spring and summer to be the busiest times for animal control, but that reports of bites have continually gone down as well as the severity of those bites.
Rayner highlighted their new call-taking dispatch system where Foothills Regional EMS will be taking all complaints as of Jan. 3.
Smart Squad is another new system AME will have at its fingertips, which allows e-ticketing, and monitoring of officers and their hotspots.
All tickets will be printed off for citizens, which Rayner said is great for accountability.
“One of the things with Smart Squad that’s really interesting is that with the GPS, at the end of the shift I will know where officers are at all times,” said Rayner. “They do actually print out a hotspot where our officers spend most of their time so if this board was still convening what I would have done is to bring our high accident rate, biggest complaints, and show where they are on a map and put these hotspots over them to demonstrate what type of enforcement we’re doing and how well we’re doing that.”
Along with this, AME will have the addition of body worn cameras in 2024.
Moving forward, Rayner also mentioned AME will have access to RCMP radio channels.
He called this a game changer for officer safety and communication to enhance joint efforts.
RCMP update
Airdrie Insp. Lauren Weare noted that the second quarter of 2023 saw a downward trend in persons and property crimes, including frauds and extortions.
Overall from 2022 to 2023, there was a 10 per cent decrease in total criminal code offenses, a 16 per cent decrease in persons crime, a two per cent decrease in property crime, and a 25 per cent decrease in other criminal code offenses.
The only increase was motor vehicle collisions with the bulk occuring along Yankee Valley Boulevard, she said.
“Since that 40th ave. [interchange] opened up, I’m absolutely gobsmacked... It is an impressive decrease in the amount of traffic volume on Yankee Valley Boulevard,” she said, adding it will be interesting to see Q3 if collision locations have reduced if not been eliminated.
She thanked the Municipal Policing Advisory Board for their work and said they were instrumental in forming Airdire’s Mental Health and Addictions Liaison Team in 2018.
She added that the sex crime unit pilot last year indicated the need for that team.
The pilot showed that many sex crimes involved youth, relationships, and family.
The program has been rebranded and realigned with domestic violence to be run by the special investigative unit. She added that they were also approved for a sex crimes physician.
Additionally, the body-worn cameras used previously by RCMP were not in line with the requirements and new cameras will be distributed to RCMP members, she said.
