By Lyonel Doherty

An old crosswalk on Main Street will see a rebirth in Oliver.

Some people may have noticed that the existing crosswalk on the north side of Bank Avenue has been scraped off. This is in preparation for the old crosswalk on the south side to be re-established.

When the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure repaved Main Street a couple of years ago, the crosswalk on the south side of the intersection was not re-painted. Instead, a new one was established on the north side. However, many people continued to use the old crosswalk despite the fact it wasn’t marked. This created a safety hazard, with a number of people reporting near-misses and close calls with motorists at this location.

Shawn Goodsell, director of the Town’s public works department, said council had requested the change (back to the original crosswalk) when the ministry upgraded the pavement and sidewalks.

“We originally requested the south crossing if only one crossing is allowed. This was missed in some communication with the contractor at the time and now is being corrected.”

Goodsell said the ministry did agree to a change and decided that it would eradicate the existing (north) sidewalk crossing and switch back to original.

The Town is cost sharing for this work, he pointed out.

Goodsell said the Town believes the south crossing is the busier crossing, but noted they will likely see some people continue to use the north side even though it is scraped off.

Councillor Maureen Doerr said they have observed more people using the south side than the north side.

It is said the municipality can only have one crosswalk per intersection as per ministry rules, so the Town chose to re-instate the south side crosswalk, Doerr said.

But there will always be people who will use both, she pointed out.

“As we were told, even without the actual crosswalk painted, it is still necessary for all cars to stop at the intersection when someone is crossing,” Doerr said.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:24.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-fareast-language:JA;}