Dear Editor:
The application to accommodate a major trucking facility at the corner of Brock and Gilmore Roads in Aberfoyle requires rezoning from highway commercial/secondary agriculture to industrial.
Currently there are several trucking facilities and industrial businesses between highway 401 and McLean Road. The subject land serves as a buffer between these industries and the residential communities. This is a good thing but having a trucking facility immediately adjacent to residences is not.
With potentially over 120 tractors and trailers and 150 employees the traffic problems will be significant. Trucks leaving the facility on Brock Road will have to either turn left across four lanes on Brock Road or turn right and use the roundabout at Gilmore. A perfect storm in either scenario.
Employees will enter and exit onto Gilmore Road. The traffic studies assumed that all employees would turn left on Gilmore and use the roundabout. There will be only about six car lengths from the exit to the roundabout which undoubtedly will create a back up on Gilmore. Access to the roundabout off Gilmore can be difficult at the best of times, but with added truck/employee traffic it could be near impossible. Cars coming off the roundabout and going east on Gilmore would be confronted with the backlog of employee traffic trying to get onto the roundabout.
The traffic studies do not take into account that employees, impatient with the congestion turning left, will turn right towards Victoria Road; another perfect storm. Gilmore is not intended for heavy traffic. It is a gravel road with narrow shoulders and is used by joggers, dog walkers and school children. Access onto to Victoria is difficult because of the limited visibility. In both directions, a real accident potential location.
Please keep the industries and residences separated and say “no” to the rezoning.
Gwen and Jim Burgess,
Aberfoyle