There’s one thing all council members can agree on: the intersection of Pine St South and Sullivan Ave is in desperate need of some traffic safety measures. But when it comes finding a solution, opinions are divided.
As ThoroldToday reported, councillors are worried that the downtown McDonald’s has exacerbated traffic safety issues at the intersection.
During Tuesday’s City council meeting, councillors were asked to approve a $100,000 traffic safety study for the intersection, but that number did not sit well with most councillors.
“I just think it’s funny how the citizens all know we need stop lights there,” Councillor Mike De Divitiis said. “Businesses know we need stop lights there, council knows we need stop lights there. But then we have to spend $100,000 on a consultant to tell us we need a stop light there? I think it’s kind of crazy.”
Council asked the city’s Manager of Engineering, Sean Dunsmore, if it was possible for the city to install traffic lights without a study.
“If the desire of everybody is to have stop lights there then we can certainly go ahead and order the stop lights,” he answered.
Because the streets that make up the intersection are municipal roads it is up to City Hall to decide whether or not traffic lights are warranted.
“The region is a supplier of ours for traffic signals,” said Dunsmore. “So when we decide we want to put traffic signals in, the region will be contacted to design and construct those traffic signals and they maintain them moving forward.”
The discussion took a surprising turn when Dunsmore said that a traffic study will probably “not recommend traffic signals at this intersection.”
“Traffic signals are a higher form of traffic safety,” he explained. “We on a regular basis install higher forms of traffic control. In a lot of our cases we put stop signs up where stop signs aren’t warranted and aren’t necessary. This would be very similar to that.”
But there’s the worry that installing traffic lights without a study — which will still cost the city between $250,000 and $300,000 — will not fix the problem in the long run.
“Just putting in a set of lights there is not going to address some of the concerns we had about pedestrian movement, advanced lights and so forth,” said Councillor Henry D’Angela. “Putting lights is not going to solve the problem that we have in its totality.”
Council members feel it’s important to solicit the public and stakeholders for input, but they don’t think a $100,000 study is warranted.
So CAO Manoj Dilwaria proposed that City Hall staff put together a report first.
“Whenever you put a signal into a place, there’s this thing called a ‘signal warrant analysis’ to make sure you are providing signalization in a place where it is warranted because it is an extensive expenditure,” he said. “We can very easily run a ‘warrant analysis’ to see whether it is justified from a traffic volume perspective or not.”
Council agreed it was a good first step and they voted to have City Hall come back with a report on the analysis as soon as possible.
