{"id":25922,"date":"2020-02-13T19:11:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T00:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25922"},"modified":"2020-02-21T18:16:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T23:16:17","slug":"seniors-raise-safety-concerns-on-john-west-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/seniors-raise-safety-concerns-on-john-west-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Seniors raise safety concerns on John West Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora is looking at\nnew safety and traffic measures along John West Way after concerns were raised\nby members of the Aurora Seniors’ Centre last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month, Council\nis poised to approve a four-way stop on John West Way at Amberhill Way, just\nnorth of Town Hall and the Aurora Seniors’ Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $800 project\nreceived the tentative green light at last week\u2019s General Committee meeting\nfollowing a presentation from Dave Legallais of the Aurora Seniors\u2019\nAssociation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Association, he said, would like to\nsee traffic slowed on Wellington Street to not only make it safer for local\nseniors who use the Centre, but for Town employees and drivers alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe south parking lot [at Town Hall] is\nused by members of the Seniors\u2019 Centre, Town employees and the public with\nbusiness at Town Hall,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a result, there are usually approximately\n10 cars parked out on John West Way adjacent to the Seniors\u2019 Centre and Town\nHall because the south parking lot is full. As membership at the Seniors\u2019\nCentre grows, this is probably going to get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeniors often experience issues with\nbalance, perception and ability to move quickly, which means crossing John West\nWay or entering and exiting their cars on John West Way can be frightening due\nto the speed of the vehicles that are travelling north and south on John West\nWay. If the parking lot is full, many of our members will leave and go home\nrather than park on John West Way, sadly missing their activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPublic transit is not really a viable\nalternative to seniors, as it is not user-friendly in this case. They must exit\nand enter the bus from the east side of John West Way, causing them to have to\ncross against the traffic both ways to get to the Centre and back to the bus.\nWe realize the speed limit on John West Way has been reduced from 50 to 40 km\nan hour. This is good, but it does not seem to really have had a significant reduction\nin the speed of the traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report before Council last week\nindicated that a recent traffic study has shown that traffic in the area does\nnot meet the warrants to require a four-way stop, but Mr. Gallais said\n\u201csometimes formulas and charts don\u2019t represent the reality of what is happening\nin the area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a view shared by the majority of\nCouncil, including Councillor Sandra Humfryes who said that she didn\u2019t want to\nwait for an accident to happen before implementing further safety measures in\nthe area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is economical, it is something we can\nput in quickly, and we can monitor to see what the impact of that is going to\nbe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Rachel Gilliland, who\npreviously put forward a motion tasking staff to look at traffic calming measures\nin and around John West Way and Amberhill Way, was also supportive of moving\nforward with the four-way stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a unique area,\u201d she said,\nreferring to the high density of housing in the area. \u201cI am looking at this\nreport and it says within that hour, 820 vehicles in an hour. That is almost\nthree times more than the warranted criteria. That has got to say a lot and it\nis only going to get worse. That stop sign needs to be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe keep increasing our Town activities,\nwe have people coming in from out of town in big busses, we had one come in for\nthe Easter Egg Hunt \u2013 where are all these people going? It is just an accident\nwaiting to happen. I am not going to sit here and wait for an accident to\nhappen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Councillor Wendy Gaertner: \u201cThere\nare a lot of different components to this, but I do think that one of them is a\nstop sign. The truth of the matter is this is an exceptional area. We have a\nlot of seniors in this area and they need a little bit of extra respect and\nprotection. The stop sign, to me, is a start, but I have some other ideas as\nwell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should the four-way stop be approved by\nCouncil on February 25, it is a step in the right direction but not the \u201cbe all\nand end all\u201d, according to Councillor John Gallo who said a four-way stop was\nonly a band-aid solution and it doesn\u2019t address the real problem: parking at\nTown Hall and the Seniors\u2019 Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to put a lot of effort into [finding] a way to have Seniors\u2019 Centre [members] park in a parking lot, whether that means expanding something somewhere, whether that means some of our staff have to move out from the bottom part of the parking lot and into the upper or across the street to Queen\u2019s Diamond Jubilee Park,\u201d he said. \u201cThe issue is the parking on the streets and whether you have a stop sign there or not, we haven\u2019t solved the problem. There are still cars on that street\u2026. They\u2019re still having to get out of their cars, their doors swing open into traffic. To me, this is a band-aid and we haven\u2019t really addressed the crux of the problem.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Councillor\nHarold Kim supported the four-way stop in the end, he initially shared similar\nconcerns to Councillor Gallo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know that seniors\nhave been waiting for something for a while but I would like to exhaust other\nmeasures before we do this, because this is the hammer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compounding the issue,\nadded Councillor Michael Thompson, is the fact John West Way is increasingly\nbeing used as a traffic bypass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a fast way to\ncircumvent all of the lights on Bayview and that is why we see significant\ntraffic and it is only going to continue to grow,\u201d he said, agreeing that lack\nof parking at Town Hall is a significant factor. \u201cBefore we do any consultant\nwork and bring on traffic studies, we need to solve that parking problem and\nfigure out what then that area looks like before moving to that particular\nmotion. In the interim, I think the stop is a good measure while we start\naddressing some of the issues like parking and so forth to at least bring a\nlittle bit of a mitigating factor to the speed and to safety.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other suggestions floated by Council members at the table to address the traffic issue and John West Way\u2019s use as a bypass were a reduced speed limit to 30 km\/hour and a four-way stop at Hollidge Boulevard and McMaster Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora is looking at new safety and traffic measures along John West Way after concerns were raised by members of the Aurora Seniors’ Centre last week. This month, Council is poised to approve a four-way stop on John West Way at Amberhill Way, just north of Town Hall and the Aurora Seniors’ Centre. The $800 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6K6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 12:45:10","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\/25922","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=25922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}