HawthorneVillager.com

Hi Jasmin
Yes the Town is monitoring these intersections similar to Yates and Thompson which should have traffic lights installed in a few weeks. Staff are working out which intersections need traffic lights and cross walks based on traffic counts as the area is occupied.

Louis St. Laurent and Thompson has always been planned to have traffic lights as Louis St. Laurent is planned to be connected to Highway #25 in the next few years and later all the way to Tremaine Road as the area is built. Will pass you comments onto Engineering staff.
Colin Best
Local & Regional Councillor
Wards 2 & 4.

Isn't that what I said when the lights at Yates and Thompson were being debated here that now lights will be demanded at Hepburn, Kennedy Circle and any other little street that connects to Thompson?

I am of the opeinion that along Thompson south of Derry lights should be installed only at Clark and Louis St. Laurent. These should be the main streets for in and out of the neighbourhood.

Having all thiose lights installed will bering the traffic to a crawl and make the little side streets like Hepburn, Kennedy Circle and Yates more unsafe.

I'm all for it.
I live at Thompson and Kennedy, and all day long, cars go flying by at significantly higher than posted speeds. If this slows them down. I'll personally help install the lights !!

You should try just crossig the street to go the plaza....you take your life in your hands.

I would love to see a radar patrol here one day.....he'd have a field day !

Pete

_________________
New Miltonians

Colin,

I have to agree with Rob about the lights, not speed bumps (those are worse). What should be a quick 10 minute commute across town is quickly becoming a 30 minute nightmare of red lights.

Please stop ruining perfectly good commuter routes (like Dundas with what seems like thousands of traffic lights at every piddly little road) and now Derry, and soon Thompson.

And civil engineers should stop making so many intersections with these major roads in the first place.

More lights will not make bad drivers better.

Dean.

Hi everyone
Thanks for the comments, engineering staff have a formula from the Ministry of Transport on how much traffic, turning movements and pedestrian crossing are needed to justify a traffic light system which costs over $ 100,000 each. They have turned down requests at some intersections as they do no warrant them and as some of you mentioned only clog up traffic.

Town and Regional staff are working together is co-ordinating traffic signals along Derry and Thompson along with advanced greens and seperate right turn lanes.

Part of the reason for the delay in any traffic signals further south of Yates is that Mattamy is bringing an application next month to council called the diocese lands south of the church where they are clearing the land for an infill area along with a school site and an extension of Clark Blvd. to the west this may be a more appropriate site for traffic lights, but staff have to review all the locations after the homes are built to find out where the most needed locations are first rather than putting lights at every intersection that may not be warranted.

Will keep in touch regarding this and other traffic issues.

Colin Best
Local & regional councillor
Wards 2 & 4.

Colin,

My isseu with the town engineering department related to traffic lights is that they are doing traffic studies in areas where developemnt and traffic is not settled yet.

We are already talking about lights at Yates, Kennedy and Hepburn while nobodey is talking about Clark where the other of two sets of lights that should be put on Thompson belongs. The other would be Luis St. Laurent and it should handle all the pedestrian traffic in and out of the plaza.

When lights are put up in intersections between main street and small local streets, the traffic on those small local streets increases significantly as people will start using them as alternate paths to get to their destination trying to avoid posible delays at lights ahead. Also neither of the much tlaked about streets (Yates, Kennedy and Hepburn) are wide enough to accomodate increased traffic.

We all remember how angry Yates (east of Thompson) resindents got just over a year ago whebn Yates was used to access Thompson beacuse of very poor conditions on Thompson due to construction.

I am also surprised why developemnt on the west side of Thompson did not start around Clark expanding north and south over time. This will have allowed the town to put the lights at Clark where they belong and avoid current delays to access Thomson through left turns.

Also, as a note to people complaining: thsi is a new development are and as such not all the infrastructure is in place or at optimised level. Get used to it as some of us have. If you want perfect infrastructure, buy in a well established area. WE never complained when we moved in in July, had the curb build in September, sidewalks in October and, to avoid croosing (or turning left on) Derry at Fourth Line (of course no lights) had to use Trudeau to get to Derry west to get to town.

I agree with dakaardian.

You can't just plunk streetlights wherever, because it often has negative effects on other streets, as dakaardian mentioned.

For example, on Britannia, west of 4th line, they added a light for north-south traffic on fifth/sixth line (near Terra Greenhouses). Even with the timing of these lights, it still causes a backup of east-west traffic, for the one or two cars trying to go north-south.

As a test I drove north-south on 5th/6th line to see if it was faster. I found out that most of the people using it, are going north to the 401, or using it to drive on rural roads to go west to Burlington and miss the traffic.

I think the town's engineering department needs to be beefed up, and should run trials/simulations to better assess the effect on traffic. I find currently, they respond to complaints, and put lights or stopsigns in without fully evaluating the consequences of putting things in.

Can we have a speedtrap (permanent if possible) on Thompson south of Hepburn?? It's a 50km/h zone and people continue to drive through at over 80km/h, usually giving me the dirty looks.

I think the 50km/h sign is either too small or positioned incorrectly.. either that or we have very bad drivers on our streets!