{"id":20233,"date":"2018-03-28T23:36:20","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T03:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20233"},"modified":"2018-03-28T23:36:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T03:36:20","slug":"yonge-and-wellington-development-raises-traffic-worries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/yonge-and-wellington-development-raises-traffic-worries\/","title":{"rendered":"Yonge and Wellington development raises traffic worries"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost complete, and when it is, a new stacked townhouse development near the northwest corner of Yonge and Wellington will bring 126 new homes to Aurora\u2019s downtown core.
\nWhile the development will bring new people into the area, just how they are going to get in and out, has raised concerns around the Council table.
\nCouncil last week, sitting at the committee level, sounded alarm bells over the Treasure Hill development, 126 stacked back-to-back townhouse units built on the site of the grocery store which once stood at Aurora\u2019s busiest intersection.
\nCouncil approved an official plan amendment in June of 2016, converting this site into a residential designation, and thus paving the way for the townhouse development, including visitor parking and private roads on the site.
\nBut these private roads only go so far.
\nThe development foregoes access onto Yonge Street, which is seen as a positive for drivers travelling north and south, but the only way one can access the new development is off Machell Avenue, which connects at Wellington Street West.
\nThere is only one way in, there is only one way out, and this could be a problem, according to some Council members.
\n\u201cI am kind of speechless,\u201d said Councillor Wendy Gaertner, asking Marco Ramunno, Aurora\u2019s Director of Planning, if Central York Fire Services had approved a plan with no secondary access for fire and emergency vehicles.
\n\u201cThe site plan was approved about a year ago and construction is near completion,\u201d replied Mr. Ramunno. \u201cIt met the fire route requirements and all the other site plan design criteria.\u201d
\nSome Councillors nevertheless remained sceptical, with suggestions the Town undertake a traffic study of its own, above and beyond the one provided, as required, by the developers themselves.
\n\u201cOnce this site is up and running, will staff be conducting any type of traffic study of our own, considering it is only a one-way in and out from Machell and then, from there, entering onto Wellington?\u201d asked Councillor Tom Mrakas. \u201cRight now it is a difficult turn to manoeuvre.\u201d
\nOccupancy, said Mr. Ramunno, is expected this fall and Aurora typically doesn\u2019t undertake a traffic study of its own. That being said, he added they could have their in-house traffic analyst go out and monitor the site once it is fully occupied. Proper traffic transportation studies were already conducted, he concluded.
\n\u201cWhile I appreciate that, the applicant did do a traffic study and I think we have seen this many times that I don\u2019t think we have seen an applicant come forward with a traffic study that says there is too much traffic and it won\u2019t be able to handle it,\u201d Councillor Mrakas continued. \u201cI would prefer us to do our own traffic study and maybe we can speak to the Region as well and have them look at doing a traffic study and some counts along Wellington coming out of Machell. I believe there are going to be some issues with traffic once that is up and running.\u201d
\nCouncillors Gaertner and Mrakas weren\u2019t the only ones with these concerns.
\nCouncillor Sandra Humfryes, for instance, said while she likes the development as it is progressing just north of the intersection, she said she hoped it wouldn\u2019t cause a traffic concern.
\n\u201cI think the goal is the people in the area who live there hopefully use transit and walk because everything is there,\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully transit is a great option for them and I am thankful that we\u2019re coming to the end of this development and happy to move forward with this.\u201d
\nNevertheless, none of this allayed Councillor Gaertner\u2019s concerns.
\n\u201cTo me, having a fairly dense development at Yonge and Wellington in our downtown core that doesn\u2019t have a secondary emergency exit, even if it isn\u2019t an exit that is in use [in case] fire, etc., need to use it, I find it very strange and in 14 years I have never seen any plan that we have ever approved that had only one entrance and exit to be used in case of an emergency.\u201d
\nThere is pedestrian access out to Yonge Street, Mr. Ramunno remarked and while traffic will have this singular access point, it has been vetted through both the municipality\u2019s engineering and planning department, as well as with Central York Fire Services.
\n\u201cIf Fire is happy with that, I am pleased to hear it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s almost complete, and when it is, a new stacked townhouse development near the northwest corner of Yonge and Wellington will bring 126 new homes to Aurora\u2019s downtown core.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-29-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5gl","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 10:49:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}