• Just between us

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Remember when a stop sign was enough?

posted by BOFarrell at 9h53

Have you driven down Anciens Combattants Blvd. in Ste. Anne de Bellevue lately?

The backlog of traffic heading south to Highway 20 is crazy. Cars are backed up all the way to the Veterans' Hospital. Of course, there's no mystery surrounding the cause of the problem. It's the new traffic lights controling the access to the highway on-ramps. Ever since they were installed, traffic has appeared.

I travel that route all the time as I head from Highway 40 to Highway 20. Before, it was smooth sailing – every day of the week, at all hours of the day. But not any more.

Now, it's stop, wait, crawl and stop again, as you slowly watch the leaves change colours. And since the school year has started it seems worse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of progress. But installing those lights has not helped anything. 

The question now is: How long will it take for something to be done to fix the problem? It's obvious the lights are out of sync.  

Maybe now that the town of Ste. Anne is taking over responsibility for maintaining the boulevard it will be able to fix it.

Here's one suggestion: Let the red lights flash on and off. When stops signs were the only device used to control circulation, there was no problem.