‘DEATH TRAP’ NO MORE
An official ceremony opened the Dougall Avenue/cn Rail Pedestrian Underpass on Tuesday. A couple of cyclists zip through the underpass shortly after the event while a train sits overhead. The crossing had long been one of the city’s most dangerous.
After decades of being regarded as one of the most dangerous passages for pedestrians and cyclists in the city, Dougall Avenue at the CN Rail tracks has become a whole lot safer.
On Tuesday, the City of Windsor celebrated the opening of the Dougall Avenue underpass for non-vehicle traffic — completing a $9-million intersection, roadway and multi-use trail improvement project.
“We will leave behind the moniker of this being the ‘Dougall Death Trap,’ ” said Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison, who joined Mayor Drew Dilkens for a press conference at the freshly constructed tunnel.
Dilkens admitted that it “took a lot” to make the project a reality. “There were a number of things that had to be done. Let’s say it that way.
“After years of study and planning and co-ordination, here we are opening this wonderful project today.”
Prior to completion of the 32-metre passage, the section of Dougall Avenue had little space for anything but automobiles.
Anyone not travelling in a vehicle was cut off from the other side of the tracks — unless they dared to use the narrow shoulder of the roadway, and attempt to share space with the 48,000 motorists who use the roadway daily.
Just north of the tracks, the merging point of Dougall Avenue and Ouellette Place had the highest collision rate in the city for non-signal intersections.
The overhauling of the intersection with new traffic lights was completed in December. The underpass was the second stage of the project.
Dilkens noted that although the request for proposals was issued in 2018, the need for a solution had been heard for decades — possibly even half a century.
“(It’s) something that everyone has been talking about for the better part of 50 years,” Dilkens said.
According to Dilkens, one of the biggest complications to the endeavor was getting the co-operation of CN Rail.
“To close these train tracks down for a 48-hour period ... that was a very, very long and difficult process.”
The section has been problematic for so long, Dilkens can remember campaigning about it when he made his first attempt to enter municipal politics (unsuccessfully) in 2003.
“This was the project I was talking about in that campaign literature,” Dilkens said. “And I wasn’t the first .... There were others before me.”
Morrison said he didn’t start the Dougall Death Trap nickname, but people of South Windsor have known it to be a “very scary” section of roadway.
“It’s been called that a long time,” he said with a laugh. “We can get rid of that term now.”
Former Ward 10 councillors Al Maghnieh and Paul Borrelli also advocated for construction of the project during their terms on council.
“I worked on that for four years. That was one of my main projects,” Borrelli said on Tuesday. “It was in my campaign brochure and everything.”
But Borrelli was not at the press conference on Tuesday. “I’m not offended. I just wasn’t informed,” he said.