Costly court battle unproductive

Beaconsfield incumbent mayor Bob Benedetti is determined, come hell or high water, to open up James Shaw Street in Beaconsfield north, but in the end, we don't necessarily see the point.

Benedetti wants to open the street up to join Kirkland's Gerard Guindon Street, in order to improve response times for emergency vehicles – specifically, in this case, fire trucks.

Some years back, a truck took up to ten minutes responding to a call in the area, thus prompting the campaign to open the street. A number of residents on the street, upset because their quiet cul-de-sac was likely to become a thoroughfare to the Highway 40 service road, took the mayor to court and won an injunction against opening the street to civilian traffic.

Benedetti continues to insist he wants to open the street for safety reasons.

"The reason we decided to open up James Shaw was the safety issue for people on both sides (of the Kirkland-Beaconsfield border," he told The Chronicle last week.

"In fact, the street should already be open. That had always been the plan."

The reality is that even as far back as four years ago, even the residents on the street were open to the idea of a limited-access emergency lane for fire trucks, police and ambulances.

Benedetti, though, pushed for the access to be open to all vehicles. The residents suggested a barrier of some kind, but Benedetti still insisted he would only put up a sign closing the passage to regular traffic.

The problem with a sign only is the fact that even when the passage was blocked only by a curb (currently, cement blocks are up,) drivers would routinely drive over the curb to take a shortcut to Highway 40.

What's interesting about all this is that fire trucks from Beaconsfield responding to a call on James Shaw would likely arrive via Highway 20 and Elm Street, not from the north, so Benedetti, in his rush to open James Shaw, is trying to make citizens of Kirkland safer, and to date, not Kirkland, nor its council or administrators have shown any interest in a path between the two cities.

In fact, the only benefit we can see of opening James Shaw is to get Beaconsfield residents easier, faster access to Highway 40 – and we can see why James Shaw residents would be against that.