NORTH PERTH – A portion of Wallace Avenue South will become a one-way street for up to six weeks starting the week of Aug. 16.
While council ultimately approved the staff recommendation to proceed with the pilot program, it wasn’t without plenty of discussion.
Council heard an update from Manager of Operations Lyndon Kowch on Monday night about the proposed pilot project for turning a one-block section of Wallace Avenue South between Main Street and Elma Street into a one-way street.
The idea behind turning this block into a one-way street would be to remove that northbound traffic from the flow of the intersection, and taking the time from the traffic light cycle at that part of the intersection and dividing it between the Main Street and Wallace Avenue North lights.
“The trial is necessary in order for understanding what the removal of the northbound movement at the intersection would be, and how much more efficient the intersection would become because of it,” said Kowch. “This is a trial. We have been monitoring the intersections by car count and also the queue lengths in the downtown core now that traffic is back to see how much we are waiting at that intersection. We’re going to do the same when we start the trial, and we will be monitoring the traffic counts and queues at that time and we would be able to bring information back to you, likely in October.”
Included with Kowch’s report on Monday night was a fact sheet with traffic data from May and August of 2018. According to that data, traffic is about eight per cent higher in the summer. During the summer, just over 1,000 cars move through the downtown’s main intersection on a Friday morning and about 1,400 cars on a Friday afternoon.
Of that traffic, trucks account for just over five per cent of the total in May, and 10 per cent in August.
Kowch said staff would like to run the trial in summer conditions for two to three weeks, and an additional two to three weeks in a “normal fall with school on.”
In addition to the above portion of Wallace Avenue South being one-way southbound, a dedicated emergency vehicle lane will be created northbound from the fire station to Main Street that does not conflict with southbound traffic. Parking will also be restricted on Wallace Avenue South between Main Street and Elma Street, among other changes.
Kowch stressed to council that these are short-term solutions.
“This isn’t an excellent solution,” he said. “An excellent solution would include a bypass and moving transports and large traffic out of the core as much as we can, as well as a redesign of the intersection, but we know those are longer-term solutions.”
Before councillors commented on the pilot project, Mayor Todd Kasenberg reminded everyone that council started this process in September 2019 and that Monday night was about passing legislation to amend the municipal traffic bylaws to allow the trial to proceed.
“This council has made this decision already,” said Kasenberg.
Coun. Lee Anne Andriessen asked Kowch if there would be any signage or recommended routes suggested for those travelling northbound into northern Listowel.
Kowch stated that numerous conversations with the consultants were had about how to direct traffic through the area or around the area. He said that signage will be installed near the corner of Wallace and Elma to indicate to northbound traffic that they can make a left turn on Elma.
“Those trucks would either continue to the west or they would turn up Livingstone and make a right and the turn back to Wallace. I’m expecting traffic to do the same and find their own way through the area,” said Kowch. “We have been counting the amount of turning movements and the usage of Wellington, Davidson and Livingstone to see what’s involved in terms of the amount of traffic there now. We’re expecting more traffic [will use those streets].”
Kowch added there won’t be a suggested detour like there would be with construction, as there are numerous options for drivers heading north and many drivers coming from the south end of town are local.
Andriessen also asked if trucks could be directed to use Line 84 instead of coming up Wallace Avenue South.
Kowch said that heading east, Rocher Road is paved now and is an excellent option. He stated an information sign will be put up this week to say that the northern part of Wallace is one-way to advise trucks or anyone coming through the area to probably make that turn.
“It’s excellent that this trial is being done after [Line] 84 is complete. It will allow the road to perform as high as it can and hopefully the trucks see the inconvenience of the one-way southbound. I would say that I don’t have the stats in front of me, but [Wallace] is the least-used trucking movement of those routes,” said Kowch.
Long term, Kowch said staff are looking at recommendations through the transportation master plan later this year that will “tell us where we will start to build a truck bypass route that will get them out of the core more significantly than this would.”
Coun. Allan Rothwell asked what the timeline looks like for switching the area over to one-way for the trial, and likewise about switching back at the end of the trial period if it is not successful. Kowch said it would be a relatively quick turnaround – a day or two – for painting, installation of signage and reprogramming traffic signals.
“It’s a significant amount of work,” he said. “That’s all supposed to happen, weather permitting, Monday and Tuesday of next week.”
If the trial proves to be successful, some items will need to be winterized, such as the delineated emergency vehicle lane coming up Wallace and the signage being installed permanently. Kowch said keeping it a one-way street will be “relatively seamless.”
If it is not successful, council will likely have a report come to them from the consultant with a recommendation to revert to the current setup.
“We are prepared for both options,” said Kowch.
Coun. Julie Behrns thanked Kowch for the immense amount of work put into this pilot project.
“It’s time to get movement in the downtown core and it has been one of those issues that has served us for as long as some of us have lived in the municipality, so thank you for all your hard work,” she said.
However, Behrns said the amount of comments and feedback she has received from residents concerns her.
“I do realize that back in 2019 we did believe that this was a possibility and that council voted in favour of it, however… it is of great concern to me because there is no other light that they can be directed to to move north in the municipality,” she said. “So trying to take traffic off of this one small section and dump it onto other sections, and we all know the municipality and how hard it is to turn onto Main Street at certain times of the day and the week, especially those wanting to go westbound, that is almost going to be an impossibility.”
Added Behrns, “In fairness to my colleagues, I simply cannot support this just because of the sheer number of people who have contacted me with concerns and because of our emergency vehicle access situation, I simply can’t support this particular aspect of this.”
Kowch said the concerns raised by Behrns have been brought to staff’s attention throughout the process.
“We know 10 per cent of the traffic heads northbound at that intersection,” he said. “The queues we are measuring, they’re measuring up to several kilometres in the peak hour that we’re measuring. We’ll bring all those statistics back and we’ll hopefully show a solution that’s there’s far greater efficiency.”
Kowch added that wait times turning off of one of the alternate routes are expected and that those are one of the consequences they will be measuring for the 10 per cent that wants to continue northbound.
“We need to know the numbers, we know the fact sheet says 90 per cent of the traffic that is backing up is using the other legs and will be greatly impacted, hopefully in a positive way,” he said. “It’s that 10 per cent heading northbound that will be potentially inconvenienced. We hope there are paths that are safe, certainly, it just means some wait times there.”
Coun. Neil Anstett shared a lot of the same sentiments as Behrns. He asked Kowch about the metrics, namely what metrics are being used to determine if this pilot project is successful.
“What does success look like?” he asked.
Kowch said success would see the wait times reduced for vehicles coming off of the side streets onto Main Street, as well as seeing wait times at the lights reduced.
“I’m even quite surprised at the length of the queues extending beyond Giant Tiger, for example, across those intersections and blocking traffic. Those are exactly what we are trying to avoid. Those wait times for anyone coming off the side streets onto those queues can be several minutes, but that is what we’ll be measuring,” he said. “We’ve measured all the queues and all of the times people are waiting in the peak hours of traffic over the last few weeks, and we want to make a comparison to when this is running to see if those queues have been reduced.”
Coun. Matt Richardson said that traffic is going to increase as the population increases and that it is time to try something to alleviate the congestion in the downtown core.
“I do think it will be inconvenient,” he said. “It will be inconvenient for a lot of people who have not seen it before or notice that everything is going to be happening down there, but I do think we need to try something.”
Richardson added that he is “quite curious to see what the results of this will be.”
Kasenberg agreed that this will be an inconvenience to some, but believes the benefits will be positive.
“While it’s controversial and will inconvenience some, I think the bigger picture is that others, including our downtown merchants, could be greatly benefitted by this change and it is for this reason that I believe we should stay the course that this council has set when we started this experiment in motion in September 2019,” he said.
Nichol Avenue South
Council also approved turning a portion of Nichol Avenue South between Clayton Street East and Mowat Street East into a one-way street beginning Aug. 23.
Kowch said this is also a short-term solution as a result of ongoing discussions with Eastdale Public School, the Avon Maitland District School Board administrative and transportation groups, as well as the municipality, police and the Eastdale School Board.
“It will provide for far less conflicts of turning movements of cars and pedestrians around the buses and provide a one-way direction for all traffic that’s clearer for everyone that’s using that block,” said Kowch.
“We’re going to continue working with the school board to work on solutions, probably on their site, that will see enhanced drop-off areas and changes in the future. For the short term, we’re recommending the one-way southbound through the review to reduce the conflicts along that portion of the street.”
