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At least 102 crashes reported over three years at these intersections
Erica Campbell, One Of The Organizers Of A Womenonly Beer-tasting Event In Ottawa.
At 19 Ottawa intersections where signals are warranted but not installed, there were 102 crashes over three years.
Of those intersections, Barnsdale Road and Prince of Wales Drive had the most collisions between 2014 and 2016. There were 19 collisions there over the three years, city data show. The city has earmarked $1.4 million in the 2018 budget for traffic control measures at the intersection and is proposing a roundabout, possibly starting construction as early as 2019.
There isn’t enough money in the budget to install traffic lights or roundabouts at all the intersections that currently meet the statistical thresholds for traffic controls. Councillors have heard a traffic signal can cost up to $2 million and a roundabout can be as much as $3 million, depending on the technical and property requirements.
The Barnsdale-Prince of Wales intersection is the only one of the 19 with construction funding in the 2018 budget.
The city uses a “warrant” system tied to provincial traffic standards to decide when intersections should be outfitted with traffic controls. An intersection must register 100 per cent in the warrant analysis to be considered for a traffic signal.
The top 10 intersections that fall below the 100-per-cent cutoff have warrants registering between 92 and 98 per cent. Those intersections collectively had 31 collisions between 2014 and 2016.
The warrant system, at times, makes councillors throw up their arms in frustration. On one hand, the city wants to use data, backed by the provincial standards, to support a decision to install traffic controls. On the other hand, councillors want to act on concerns raised by constituents when it comes to traffic safety. How people feel about safety at a particular intersection doesn’t always align with the warrant data.
It’s a beef frequently aired at council’s transportation committee. Take last Wednesday as an example.
Innes Coun. Jody Mitic had a report asking for the committee’s support to install stop signs on a road in his ward, even though city staff say the all-way stop measure doesn’t meet the warrant criteria. It has become an unwritten rule that when a councillor brings this kind of request to the committee, and the costs of implementation are small, councillors side with their colleague rather than the advice of the transportation department.
Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury suggested “we’re all uncomfortable” with the warrant system.
“There are local priorities that we as councillors are elected for and want to improve, and unfortunately the warrant system is killing us,” Fleury said during the committee meeting.
There was a similar conundrum at the last planning committee meeting. Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans argued for the installation of a traffic light at Lester Road and Meandering Brook Drive before the construction of a new development, but the intersection doesn’t meet the warrant criteria. The matter also gave councillors the opportunity to tee off on the warrant system.
On Tuesday, Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson will ask the planning committee for support to add the intersection of Terry Fox and Huntsville drives to the list of traffic signals paid by development charges. She wants the work done before the start of the next school year. According to the city’s data, the intersection’s warrant status is 97 per cent, but Wilkinson says there has been more development in the area since the last data collection in June 2017. “Residents have been emailing and calling about this intersection for years and many have talked about the danger and possibility of death,” Wilkinson writes in a report.
There isn’t an alternative to the warrant system, but councillors have raised interest in finding ways of taking community concerns into account when considering where to implement new traffic controls.