When Bill Cordner stood up to the microphone at the Aug. 23 Beaconsfield council meeting to speak out about upcoming traffic sign changes on St. Louis Avenue, what seemed like the whole street stood up with him. Two signs unexpectedly went up under the stop signs at the corner of St. Louis and St. Lawrence avenues announcing their removal as of Sept. 30, 2010. It came as a shock to the street and especially Bill and Judy Cordner who have been appealing to the city to put in speed bumps on the street for years.
“A couple of years ago, we asked for speed bumps because of people speeding on the street,” Bill told the Chronicle. “We didn’t get them and now they want to take away the only stop sign.”
The Cordners presented a petition to the council on behalf of their street demanding a speed bump be installed on St. Louis between Beaurepaire Drive and St. Lawrence Avenue, citing the safety of the children on the street as a priority. They also do not want the stop signs to be removed.
“We have a lot of children in this one little area,” Bill said. “We have 26 children between Beaurepaire and Church avenues. (St. Louis) is a main feeder street to the (Beaurepaire) village. If all they want is to get rid of stop signs, I don’t think they gave it very much thought as to local traffic. I can see them taking away stop signs on little quiet streets, but this is not a quiet street.”
While the councillor of the district, Michael Montagano, expressed his support against the removal of the stop signs, Mayor David Pollock stated that major changes to traffic signs were to occur all over Beaconsfield and also assured that it was not done arbitrarily.
“We did a study in the city of every intersection and we did traffic flows and speed measurements,” he said. “We looked at every intersection and how much cross-traffic it had. There were a lot of streets that had four stop signs on them where there was very little cross-traffic. Because of that, it didn’t justify having a stop sign.”
Pollock also stated that once the changes were made, studies would be done to see the effect and if countermeasures needed to be adopted, the council would attend to it. But the neighbours on St. Louis are not just angry about their stop signs being removed, they are mad they were never consulted.
“Granted, I believe in surveys and trying to get as much information as you can but I’ve been here 31 years and I know the traffic that’s on this street,” Bill said. “Nobody has ever come along and knocked on anybody’s door to ask what we thought about it. If they are going to do something like that, why not send around a questionnaire to the people. It costs nothing to keep the stop sign there.”
