After years of fighting for speed reductions, the City of Winkler wants to see the Highway Traffic Board itself revised.

City Council is hoping other municipalities will join them in lobbying the government to change the responsibilities of the Highway Traffic Board to that of a review board.

"Quite frankly I think it's not only the city of Winkler," Winkler Mayor Martin Harder says. "I know there's a number of municipalities across Manitoba who are very tired of running to the highway traffic board in order to make applications for reductions of speed limits."

The city has been denied on numerous occasions to reduce the speed on roadways through Winkler, even though they were based on safety concerns.

"We're capable of setting the speed limits in our own communities," Harder says.

Winkler is submitting a resolution to the Association of Manitoba Municipalities to lobby the government to reevaluate the responsibilities of the traffic board.

"It's a red tape issue, so I don't think it's going to be too difficult to get approval from the municipalities to back us," he says.

Instead, council would like to see the Highway Traffic Board take on a review board role on speed reductions within city limits.

"They would still have the opportunity to comment... and if there are changes that need to be made we'd take a look at it," he says.

Council is currently fighting for two speed reductions; changing 15th St. from 70 km/h to 50 km/h which is adjacent to multiple sports fields and popular walking paths; and another in a high-density Southgate and Stonegate development with young families, adjusting speeds from 50 km/h to 30 km/h.

The battle with MIT goes back nearly a decade to a request for a speed reduction on Highway 14.

The two-year process, which started in 2008, included multiple onsite inspections with MIT and even a Winkler Police Service recommendation before the board agreed to drop the limit from 100 km/h to 60 km/h.

It was another two-year process to reduce the speed along PR 428 from 100 km/h to 50 km/h, though MIT maintained a recommendation of 60 km/h. The city eventually exercised its authority to establish a 50 km/h speed limit as the highway ran past a school zone.