Time to fix perilous Dougall underpass

In timely Car Town hockey parlance, “it was a close call” — not on the east side ice pad, but early Saturday morning along the Ouellette-Dougall corridor. An elderly life, precious no doubt to a family and friends, wobbled along the road on a bike — precariously but determined.

Attentive southbound drivers swerving skilfully avoided a deadly scenario.

The recommendations of the study of the so-called Central Box, completed last year, concurred with citizens’ calls for a widened, paved sidewalk and tunnelling through the aged railway embankment. It provided photos of similar projects completed in other municipalities.

Ironically, the wellattended community input sessions took place within a stone’s throw of the perilous pathway and the out-of-town traffic engineering experts admitted hearing first-hand experiences of students from nearby schools, cyclists and pedestrians who have no north-south pathway alternative to this unavoidable squeeze play.

City council should already have the mayor and three councillors on board to derail this hazard. Surely, there is among the remaining elected officials one more sensible and sensitive advocate to approve the remediation of this inevitable death trap.

As my own car ride continued, an ominous harbinger in the form of sirens and flashing lights approached from the oncoming lanes, then turned on a side street to assist another fragile person in our community.

Life is a journey, but when we knowingly allow dangerous obstacles to persist instead of correcting their impedance to the safety of our citizens, shame on us. Randal W. Sasso, Windsor