City Councillor Tanya Vrebosch believes the chances are not good that Algonquin will see a crosswalk installed near the 1221 Algonquin Avenue crossing near the medical building on the busy street.
A rash of accidents including a fatality at the location in May of 2016 led some local citizens to create a petition to have a crosswalk installed. The online petition gathered nearly 2,000 signatures.
See that story: Algonquin Avenue crosswalk review continues while petition gains momentum
But according to Vrebosch, there is a safety concern even with a new crosswalk.
“Due to a combination of the crossing distance on Algonquin and the demographic of pedestrians, a signal disruption to traffic would be significant in an already high volume location,” stated Vrebosch in a message to citizens on Facebook.
Vrebosch noted the Ministry of Transportation regulations state that pedestrian crossing treatments should not be installed within 200m of other signal-protected pedestrian crossings. The pedestrian desire lines (where they want to cross the road) are less than 100m away from the nearest intersection on Algonquin.
“Clearly a pedestrian crossing in this location is not appropriate and in fact, could create more accidents,” she explained.
“City Staff will not recommend it and we suspect even if we did, MTO would not approve it.”
Vrebosch says one solution is to create more parking on the west side of Algonquin to cut down on the pedestrian traffic.
That initiative along with promotion and enforcement in the area in question could help more accidents from happening at the location.
“Through the Road Safety Committee which includes City personnel, the Health Unit, Police, MTO, and emergency services a public education could be provided to would warn pedestrians of the hazard of jaywalking and that law enforcement would warn/ticket at that location for impeding traffic,” said Vrebosch.
