Orléans Star
Published: Friday, June 25, 2010

Focus on local transportation

While several east end challengers to incumbents continue to rail – pardon the pun – against a downtown tunnel and offer up the false hope, folly and fiction of light rail coming eastward sooner to Trim Road, they (and local councillors) may wish to turn their attention closer to home and focus on transportation issues here in the community.

There are four local traffic issues which are sure to be raised this fall and have the potential to mobilize local voters and communities if clear answers and concrete solutions – pun intended this time – are not provided.

Firstly, Trim Road gridlock. As I’ve noted before, the growth of new communities such as Cardinal Creek, Portobello South and Southeast Avalon has tuned quaint two-lane Trim Road into a rush hour hazard. Cars are now routinely backed onto the 174 as hundreds of vehicles every ten minutes – not to mention 95X buses trying to get in and out of the park and ride – use this thoroughfare.

It has also caused a secondary backup of traffic on St. Joseph Boulevard going east before Trim Road as folks look to by-pass the 174 parking lot where cars routinely rapidly break from 100 km/hour to zero in a matter of seconds!!! And with Petrie Island becoming more popular as a daily destination combined with continued development on the old North Service Road between Tenth line and Trim, a major multiple-fatality accident has sadly crossed the eventuality threshold from the IF to the WHEN.

Candidates/councillors, when does Trim get widened to four lanes from the 174 through to Innes?

Next up, the St. Joseph and Jeanne d’Arc roundabout which is slated to begin construction this summer. Yes we have roundabouts at the Experimental Farm, in parts of Barrhaven and a few near 24 Sussex, but these are basically single-lane, low- to steady-volume traffic smoothing measures. The larger multi-lane roundabout envisaged for what is likely the community’s busiest intersection strikes me as just too much, too fast and in the wrong place.

So dear candidates and councillors, what’s the communications and education plan on this one?

Now let’s turn our attention to Insanity Road, formerly known as Innes Road between Page and Tenth Line. Since our planners and elected officials have overseen the evolution of this four-lane arterial route into a monstrous, minivan mecca of big-box retail and prefabricated blight, will they accelerate construction plans for the Blackburn bypass to run from Navan Road east? For those of us who simply want to traverse our community and not shop, this would be nice.

And finally, the eternal 417/174 split headache. Candidates do not pledge to “fix the split”. Better to promise posting each week’s Lotto Max numbers in advance; it would be more believable. I recall moderating a debate in 2003 when challenger Phil McNeely lambasted former MPP Brian Coburn about the split and Phil famously proclaimed: “I will fix the split.” Seven years on and we’re still waiting.