Councillors, don’t whine over red lights

Re: No money for signals at 19 risky corners, April 9.

It’s a little rich to hear Ottawa councillors crying over their inability to find money to fund traffic safety measures at dangerous intersections in Ottawa.

Are they not the ones who passed the city budget recently? Are they not the ones who are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars on bike lanes for the benefit of a very small segment of our population? Have they not squeezed almost every other budget item to find money for the LRT?

Why did we not hear of their anguish when the budget was up for discussion? They are correct to be concerned but it makes no sense for them to be whining as if it were someone else’s fault.

As for their frustration with the warrant system, surely one needs standards set by professionals who know far more about traffic safety than our counsellors do. The warrant system is a valuable tool for setting priorities. It should be respected or, if it is not working properly, replaced with a better system that objectively indicates where we should invest money in traffic safety.

If it were left to councillors and their “local priorities,” we would end up with a proliferation of unnecessary traffic signals and roundabouts, just as has occurred with the now-ubiquitous four-way stops. They are put in almost on demand, notwithstanding advice from city traffic engineers, in many cases, that they actually make intersections more dangerous.

Gerald Dust, Navan