Residents of the Ocean Grove area of the city will receive their traffic light at the corner of Maryland Road and Highway 19A – but not until 2019.
Council decided this week to give the go-ahead to staff to design the intersection and signal make-up next year and install them the following year, with the funding to come from within the existing financial plan.
Residents have been sending letters to council urging them to install a traffic light at that intersection, it came up as one of four intersections within city boundaries to warrant one on a recent traffic study, and now it has been selected to be the first that will be done.
“I’m overjoyed that we’re getting this intersection light,” Coun. Charlie Cornfield said this week at council. “I think it will solve most of the problems that have been happening down there. It would have been nice to see it done in 2018, but knowing that it’s coming in 2019 is just fine.”
Council will also request staff review the Ministry of Transportation request regarding the requirements for the intersection of Willow Creek Road and Jubilee Parkway.
That intersection is required to be completed by the developer of a new patio home subdivision as a condition of the approval for the building of the development and the Ministry of Transportation has said it would like it “fully singnalized” due to the speed limit on Jubillee being set at 80 km/hr.
The city’s own independent traffic assessment, however, shows that to be unnecessary, but instead recommends a “three-legged intersection with stop controls on Willow Creek Road for all vehicles entering Jubillee Parkway.
“The (traffic study) report says that even at full build-out, a major intersection is not required (at that location),” Cornfield said, “but I feel like we should look at how the light at 19A and Maryland affects the traffic flows. I think there are other ways to deal with the intersection issue.”
And so before that issue moves forward, city staff has been directed to come back to council in January with other options on controlling that future intersection.