Innisfil council is hoping the province will pay 90 per cent of the cost to make the town's busiest intersection safer for drivers and pedestrians.
A $400,000 traffic-signal improvement project was approved in the 2016 budget, and staff will apply for 90% of the cost to come from the Connecting Links program and 10% from the town's capital reserve fund.
Deputy Mayor Lynn Dollin, who represented Cookstown as Ward councillor for many years, also suggested lowering the speed limit on Queen and Church streets (Highway 89) and King Street (County Road 27) from the current 50 km/h to 40 km/h “to support the Cookstown Heritage Conservation District.”
Councillors approved a report from engineering staff this week, detailing improvements needed at Highway 89 and County Road 27 - where an average of 25,000 vehicles pass by each day.
That adds up to over 8.5 million vehicles passing through the intersection each year - with up to 94 per cent being passenger vehicles, and the engineering report noted the number of collisions is “extremely low” and listed only 15 crashes that happened from Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2014.
“None of the recorded accidents involved pedestrians, and in no case was the cause of the accident attributed to excessive speed,” the report concluded.
For many years, Cookstown residents have been concerned about traffic volumes and truck traffic on Highway 89. While the merits of a bypass to get traffic to and from the Honda Plant in Alliston has been discussed, it has never been a priority for the province.
Dollin was critical of the suggestion that the low number of collisions at the intersection didn’t warrant further action.
“What it says to the people there is that as long as you have this much traffic on your road, there’s nothing that we can do to help you,” Dollin said.
"The 40 km/h speed limit will hopefully deter or discourage not residents, but motorists travelling through,” and encourage them “to find another route,” she said.
Town staff will be applying for funding for the project through the Connecting Links grant program.
