Should the Town of Barrhead have pulled out the traffic signals Main Street?
To that, we give an unqualified yes. Something needed to be done.
We agree with mayor Dave McKenzie when he says the old traffic lights were not safe and quite frankly we were shocked that a previous council had not done something long before now.
We are not sure what the most unsafe part of the old system was. There were a few issues to choose from ranging from their unconventional placement, which resulted in more than one driver who was unfamiliar with their location to run a red light, to the lack of a pedestrian crossing indicators and the lack of the traditional two-second delay before changing from red to green.
The question is, and one we haven’t made up our minds on is whether the community and the travelling public, is better served by replacing the signals with their modern equivalent or a four-way stop.
Council seems to believe the four-way stop is the best solution and perhaps it is.
Although he agreed with the decision, he was concerned that the four-way stop, could create a traffic congestion problem downtown, especially during peak times such as lunch hour due to the high level of pedestrian traffic. It was a concern we also shared, but in the first few days of operation, it looks like it was an unfounded one.
That being regardless of whether this is the right decision or not, we think most people will agree with us that, how they came up with it was mishandled.
For example, we don’t understand why administration did not provide and councillors didn’t ask, for the cost of replacing the old traffic signals with their modern equivalents right from the start. In this case, it was an afterthought, something councillors asked for after they made the decision. In fact, councillors only received the information, a few hours before public works converted the intersection.
What happened to the public information campaign councillors promised would be rolled out before they decommissioned the traffic signals?
We didn’t see anything.
We would have settled for advertising and signage stating there would be a change to the traffic pattern along with a start date.
Sometimes how a decision is reached is just as important as the decision itself. Hopefully, next time councillors face a similar choice the journey to making the decision is a smoother one.
