Wellington County and its member municipalities are reviewing pedestrians crossings on local roads as a result of recent legislative changes.
At the March 30 county council meeting, roads committee chair councillor Gary Williamson reported on a presentation by Safe Communities Wellington County coordinator Christine Veit and co-chair councillor Gregg Davidson at the March 14 roads committee.
“The gist of the meeting was consistency for crossover markings throughout the county, including the local municipalities, and there’s been some new legislation … in 2016 and so there’s already going to be adjustments come in at the county level. The staff’s already looking into what we need to do,” Williamson explained.
New style crossovers utilize different pavement markings and signs than existing crossings and the Safe Communities group is conducting an education campaign aimed at municipalities, school boards and citizens.
“One of the discussion points that did come up is school crossings. School crossings aren’t necessarily crossovers, only when a crossing guard is present,” Williamson explained.
“If we want to turn them into crossovers then you can cross anytime,” he added, noting the measures under consideration and “mainly for consistency and safety of pedestrians and the driving public.”
Councillor Chris White expressed concern the general public is unaware of the different types of crossings.
“Do the tech guidelines allow for some sort of signage to indicate that this crossing is only a crossing when there’s a guard?”
White asked, “Why would I believe that I can’t cross on this at any time? That it isn’t just a normal crossing?”
County engineer Gordon Ough said municipalities may not have the authority to deviate from established signage at such locations.
“I don’t think we can add things to signage that was set up for those crossings,” said Ough, who offered to investigate “whether there’s any way we can do anything with this signage.”
Davidson noted “there is talk” of changing all such crossings to the new style pedestrian crossovers.
“Drivers don’t always know what to do,” noted Davidson. “If we make them all pedestrian crossovers and we educate, it will do well for this county.”
Williamson pointed out “there is cost involved” in a potential switch to crossovers, “but then you have the option it could be push button and you would not need a school crossing guard.”
“This is something that’s supported by the OPP, its support by EMS … it’s not something that’s come out of the blue,” Davidson pointed out.
“I think it’s high time we had some consistency in this county and this province,” said councillor Doug Breen. “To me it was a realization just how many kinds of crossovers that we had and how poor my personal knowledge of them was.”
The Safe Communities committee is planning to visit lower tier municipalities as part of the education program.
