New traffic calming measures in works for Centre Street

March 18, 2021 · 0 Comments

One-way traffic on segments of Centre Street may have brought some calm to the surrounding community, but they have been baffling drivers for years.

Some clarity – and additional safety – will be coming to the street at the heart of Aurora’s Heritage Conservation District as early as this month following a motion from Councillor Sandra Humfryes.

Recently, Councillor Humfryes put forward a motion calling on municipal staff to review the issue of one-way traffic on Centre Street with a focus of coming up with the “best traffic calming measures and traffic deterrent to prevent vehicles driving the wrong way on a one-way street” before the end of March.

“There is a little stretch on Centre between Spruce going to the north section of Wells Street that was part of the one-way infrastructure we created for traffic flow,” she said. “What’s happening in this area, because it is such a short little stretch, many vehicles decide to go right through really quickly, get away with it, having to avoid doing any of the things we wanted the residents to do with traffic flow. Residents tried doing a few things [but] it is tough to understand what the best plan of action would be to address this concern.”

Work to find solutions, she said, have been taking place behind the scenes not only between herself and residents, but also with Michael Bat, the Town’s Traffic Analyst.

Accompanied by a concerned resident, Councillor Humfryes said she was recently on the scene, standing near the problem area to see the issue first hand. It didn’t take long, she said, to see a driver do exactly what they weren’t supposed to do.

“They don’t even care that people are watching,” said Councillor Humfryes on drivers. “While we were standing there, several cars did the same thing: they look around and they speed. As long as police aren’t there, they’re going to take a chance to avoid.”

This is not a new issue.

Council addressed a similar problem last year, resulting in a new sign where Centre meets Yonge advising drivers that it is not a thru-street. But the Councillor contends that more needs to be done to slow drivers down.

“I am hoping my peers would be supportive for staff to look at this again and come back with a recommendation as to what we can do to provide this little stretch some safety. It certainly does not pass any warrants in terms of traffic… but this is just a very small stretch that we did to try and effectively have traffic flow the way we wanted it to move forward…and causing this little bit of a dangerous stretch. We don’t want anything tragic to happen.”

First to support the motion was Councillor Wendy Gaertner, who was a champion of the last round of measures for Centre Street.

“The only thing that really would help is police presence and I don’t think we can ask police to use their manpower for this,” she said. “I hope we can come up with something because it is very unpleasant for residents and it is really just one block, but there are residents who are experiencing trouble and I hope we can come up with a better solution.”

Council passed the motion with the end of March as the timeline for possible solutions.

With this in mind, Councillor Humfryes said that whatever concrete actions ultimately shake down from the report coming forward, she would like the resulting recommended traffic calming measures to be installed by this summer.

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter