VICTORIA PARK ROAD POSTS A HAZARD

Last week on CBC P.E.I.'s Compass, there was a segment about a safety issue with vehicular traffic on the Victoria Park roadway in Charlottetown. It had to do with the free standing metal or plastic posts the parks department set up at intervals along the dividing line between the outer traffic lane and the inner lane reserved for bicycles.

The posts were installed to keep vehicles from swerving over onto the bicycle lane to get around cars backing into parking spaces by the boardwalk. Trouble is, it makes the through traffic lane seem very narrow. As a result, the posts regularly get knocked down, especially by larger vehicles like busses. Although the posts are spring loaded to return to an upright position, they are often bent over or knocked down completely.

Indeed, it turns out that the Harbour Hippo has special permission from the city to mow them down! But the real danger, in my view, is when someone in a parked vehicle suddenly opens a door and oncoming traffic may not have time to avoid hitting it, or worse, a person exiting the vehicle.

Before the installation of the posts, oncoming vehicles could swerve slightly over onto the inner lane to avoid that possibility. Of course, they aren’t likely to do that if bicyclists or others are close by. So, give drivers some credit here for using proper judgement in situations like this.

In other words, those posts are the real hazard. Solution: Get rid of them!

David MacCallum, Charlottetown