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All-way stop signs go against staff advice

Drivers don’t like them and city staff recommended against installing them, but an all-way stop is now a reality at the intersection of Marcel and Bouchard streets in Sudbury’s South End.
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Whether you like it or not, there is a new all-way stop at the intersection of Marcel and Bouchard streets in the city's South End. File photo.

Drivers don’t like them and city staff recommended against installing them, but an all-way stop is now a reality at the intersection of Marcel and Bouchard streets in Sudbury’s South End.

The all-way stop signs will be in place for a year, when staff will prepare a report on whether it’s worth keeping them in place. But a non-scientific sampling of drivers turned up little support and a lot of hostility for the new traffic measures.

“It slows everything down,” one driver said.

“It’s a bummer,” said another. “I’m on my way home. (It takes) much, much longer.”

“Who’s the rocket scientist that came up with this?” asked yet another driver. “It sucks!”

But a longtime area resident said the signs are overdue.

“Excellent,” was his opinion of the all-way stop signs. “I’ve been here for 47 years and watched this mess progress.”

The signs are going “to keep someone from getting killed,” he said. “People drive down here like it’s racetrack.”

Whether you like it or not, there is a new all-way stop at the intersection of Marcel and Bouchard streets in the city's South End. File photo.

Whether you like it or not, there is a new all-way stop at the intersection of Marcel and Bouchard streets in the city's South End. File photo.

The signs are a result of a January decision of the operations committee, which decided to ignore staff advice and try the signs for a year.

All-way stops were also installed on Lansing Avenue and Melbourne Street, Hawthorne Drive and Westmount Avenue, Madeleine Avenue and Main Street and Madeleine Avenue and Alexander.

At the January meeting, committee members said there are safety issues in all of their wards, and if installing stop signs will give any kind of relief to residents in these neighbourhoods, then that's what the city should do.

Ward 3 Coun. Claude Berthiaume said at the time that the recommendation from city staff was “logical,” but there are “people who feel (these stop signs) are important, and the city needs to start listening.”

“There is no harm in putting in stop signs, (the cost of signage is provided for in the 2012 operating budget), even in all areas where residents express concern about traffic,” he said.

Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann said while city staff may have caught only a glimpse of the traffic situation within these area, the people who live there are the ones “who see the near misses” on a daily basis.

She said in one location of the city, a similar project was instituted and it resulted in a 50-per-cent reduction in the number of speeding vehicles.

But Ward 1 Coun. Jacques Barbeau said he had a “hard time” going against a sound argument from city staff. Barbeau said the requests brought forward at the meeting were all reasonable, but he said he doesn't support the idea that any time residents think they need a stop sign put up, staff needs to run out and do that.

“We will be inundated with those requests,” Barbeau said.

“We heard from staff, who are traffic engineers who know and understand the situation far greater than council does, and we have to accept their expert opinions. We don't have to always agree with staff, but to say we're going to go out every time a resident wants a stop sign is a slippery slope to travel down.”

Posted by Arron Pickard  


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Darren MacDonald

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