Essex County Council has given support to have the county investigate a pair of intersections in the Town of LaSalle that are designated as county roads.
At the beginning of April, LaSalle council gave approval for a notice of motion to go forward to County Council asking for a traffic study at the intersections of Martin Lane and Front Road, as well as at Victory and Front Road.
On Wednesday evening, LaSalle Mayor Crystal Meloche brought forward her notice of motion and gave some supporting background before members voted.
Meloche got some statistics from LaSalle Police to help with the motion, which showed that from January 1 until April 8 the vast majority of enforcement's took place in the area.
In addition, she mentioned that the Town of LaSalle has 275 kilometres of roadway within the municipality.
Front Road between Victory Street and Martin Lane is approximately 900 metres, which is 0.3 per cent of the total kilometres in LaSalle, yet it accounts for 13 per cent of their traffic enforcement actions taken just this year.
Meloche says she gave the statistics to give everyone an understanding of how busy the growing area is, and she also added this isn't just something that impacts LaSalle either.
"Amherstburg residents, this is how they get into the city. A lot of people are commuting every single day, and with us building as much as we are in that area and Amherstburg growing as quickly as they are, it's just creating more and more of an issue. So being able to give some of those stats based on tickets and speeding alone hopefully will spur the idea that we can't just look at traffic numbers," she said.
She says as much as traffic numbers will show a significant amount of people using the roads, she wants everyone to understand it's the other potential dangers they need to address.
"It's the speeding that takes place in the area, the potential for accidents, the fact that it's a main road into one of our grade schools and we have a lot of buses that turn at that intersection. And it's also the area in the town where it goes from 50km/h to 70 km/h, so we're seeing a lot of issues with the speeding just based on that part of it."
Meloche says issues around these intersections have been brought up several times over the years.
She added that as they started to do some additional developments off of Martin Lane, they were getting calls from residents saying they're not comfortable turning onto Front Road due to people speeding.
"So it's been an issue but it's just becoming more and more of an issue. We have several developments slated to take place right there that will only make the situation worse, so why not get ahead of it? Hopefully stop any major accidents from happening, we know we're going to need it, let's do it now and provide that safe passage for the residents," Meloche said.
Now the County's Infrastructure Services Department will investigate the traffic in the area, the speeding that takes place, any history of accidents, and ultimately determine if a traffic light should be installed or if there's a need for any other changes.
Meloche says at the next County Council meeting there will be an approximate timeframe given for how long the study will take, but her expectation is that it will take several months and could be completed sometime in the fall.