The on-again, off-again Teviotdale roundabout is back on Wellington County’s 2018 construction roadmap.
County councillors agreed on Jan. 25 to proceed with the project this year, despite a roads committee recommendation to cancel the project.
The project had been considered in 2017 budget deliberations, but at the Oct. 26, 2017 county council meeting, roads committee chair councillor Gary Williamson explained the project for the intersection of Wellington Roads 109, 7 and 123 had been dropped lower on the budget priority list in favour of addressing safety concerns with a roundabout at the intersection of Wellington Roads 8 and 9 between Drayton and Palmerston.
The 8/9 intersection, in the midst of an S-bend curve, borders Perth County, which was not prepared to proceed with the project, so the roads committee initially went back to the original plan of building a roundabout at Teviotdale.
However, following discussion at the Jan. 9 roads committee meeting, committee members approved a resolution to remove the $1.3-million dollar project from the 2018 construction schedule but leave the $429,000 levy for the project in the budget.
“The committee asked staff to review all upcoming intersection improvements in the construction forecast and confirm Teviotdale was actually the first priority,” explained Williamson at the Jan. 25 meeting.
“However, the committee did not want to hold up the budget process. We also recognize that we have all sorts of intersection work that needs to be done so the decision was made to leave the $429,000 levy portion of the budget intact, in the budget, and based on what the report is coming back from staff, we can use the money toward the next priority, which could indeed be the Teviotdale roundabout.”
Councillor George Bridge said, “I was a little concerned when I saw that Teviotdale roundabout had been pulled out.”
Bridge said he agreed the previous plan to replace the Teviotdale project with the WR 8/9 project, but when Perth did not come up with funds, he felt the Teviotdale project was “the next logical one.”
Councillor Neil Driscoll, mayor of Mapleton, noted “there was a great discussion” at the Jan. 9 meeting.
He said the main reason for the committee’s decision to pull the Teviotdale project “was they weren’t 100 per cent sure, how does staff give us that recommendation?
“How do you gather numbers that this needs to be done versus another intersection or another project in Wellington County? It is one-point three million dollars.”
Driscoll cited a report from Mapleton Fire Chief Rick Richardson that was presented at the Jan. 23 Mapleton council meeting, and additional information subsequently obtained from the Minto fire department, indicating there have been 17 major collisions at the WR 8/9 intersection (S-bends) resulting in serious injuries over the past 20 years.
“And in Parker, (at) county roads 8 and 12, where I would highly suggest you spend your $1.3 million, we’ve had 30,” said Driscoll.
“And just for interest sake, at Teviotdale intersection, in the last 20 years we’ve responded to three calls and all of them were minor.”
While Driscoll said he agrees with the staff determination that the Teviotdale intersection needs to be made more safe, he stated, “In my mind, and I’m no engineer, I admit that I go through that intersection daily and I don’t find a problem.”
Driscoll said he favoured not only taking the Teviotdale project off the schedule, but the levy funding out of the budget as well.
“We can save our taxpayers a lot of money by taking out the levy portion of that budget,” he stated.
“I know our council at home supports not putting it there because our residents have spoken to us. They read it in the paper and they said, ‘No, you don’t need this.’”
Councillor Doug Breen said he wanted to know if the Teviotdale roundabout “is the number one concern in the county” in terms of intersections.
“Is this the one we need to do right now, today?” said Breen, who indicated he did not support taking the money out of the budget, regardless of whether the project proceeds. “It needs to be there for whatever intersection is (the number one priority), and if this is it, this is it.”
Breen continued, “Mayor Driscoll said that it certainly seems that the locals didn’t want it. I’ve heard contrary opinions from Minto township and I’ve heard contrary positions from other people anecdotally, so basically I’m discounting all of that and going with the experts on this.
“If the locals think it’s necessary or not necessary is less of a concern to me than whether our engineers, whether our staff or whether MTO standards think it is.”
Warden Dennis Lever pointed out he recently spoke with the mayor and CAO of Perth County and they advised him the S-bends project has been put in Perth’s 2019 budget.
Councillor Lynda White said she has changed her thinking on roundabouts over the past couple of years.
“When we first started talking about roundabouts in Wellington County I was not in favour of it at all,” she said. However, she pointed out that since a roundabout was installed in Arthur in 2015, “We’ve have seen very little in the way of accidents. People are slowing down at that corner, so I have changed my mind about roundabouts. I think that they are a necessary safety thing.”
White also stated of the Teviotdale intersection, “I believe that a roundabout there is required and is necessary.”
Centre Wellington Mayor Kelly Linton objected to leaving money in the levy for an unspecified project.
“I don’t think we should ever be taxing residents unless a project is shovel read to go in 2018.”
Williamson pointed out the Teviotdale roundabout will impact the levy less than a project at another intersection because “the balance of the budget came out of development charges and the reason for DC charges is because of growth.” He said traffic volumes at the Teviotdale location are expected to “grow exponentially.”
Councillor Alan Alls said he supported pulling the project at the committee level, however, “in discussion with other people since, there’s a variance in opinions.” Alls said he was prepared to support the project if a technical case could be made for it as a top priority.
Noting it is well known he opposed the Arthur roundabout at the time “based on public feedback,” Wellington North Mayor Andy Lennox said he was reluctant to weigh in on the discussion.
However, he said, “The issue is transparency around how we make these decisions. How do we decide where to put these improvements? This is an increase in the level of service we’re delivering to our residents and that’s a great thing, but I think we owe it to them to understand why we’re choosing that over a Parker intersection where there’s loss of life.”
Lennox suggested council needs a “much more robust process,” for determining priorities
“We shouldn’t be putting in a roundabout just to flow traffic if there’s no issues,” stated councillor Gregg Davidson.
“I understand that eventually, when we get a lot of traffic we might have to do something, but I’d rather see an intersection be done where we have lots of injuries, lots of crashes, in those intersections over one just for traffic flow.”
Davidson added, “I agree with councillor Lennox. We need to have information on which intersection needs to be done, not just do an intersection because they think traffic flow would be better. We need to have information on not just traffic flow, but how many crashes we have there. Is there injuries? Is there loss of life? Those are the type of things we need to be looking at and those are the ones that need to be done, not just one that’s had three crashes in 20 years.”
While noting he’d love to upgrade all intersections with high accident potential, Bridge pointed out, “We do have staff. They’re engineers … I think we have to rely on our staff … All the discussion we’ve had previously have said Teviotdale’s been sitting there for three years, (it) should be done.”
Bridge said that prior to the installation of a roundabout in Minto at the intersection of WR 7 and White’s Road, “I had a lot of feedback from my residents saying ‘Why do we need (a roundabout at) White’s Road?’”
Bridge added, “We did White’s Road because of traffic accidents. Since White’s Road (roundabout) has gone in, everybody says that it’s a real good solution.
“As far as my fire chief goes, he has not talked to me about that. That’s the first I’ve known about it. I’ve talked to my council, my engineers in Minto and I can tell you they’re all for putting one in Teviotdale.”
Councillor Chris White said, “I think we need to be careful we don’t get too far down into the weeds in this concept.
“We have an infrastructure deficit across the county … It sounds like we have several intersections that could use some work. It’s important we maintain the tax capacity to get those intersections completed.”
White said he understood when the Teviodtale project was removed from the schedule there would be further discussion about what project would replace it.
“If you pull Teviotdale and pull the funding, all you’re doing is moving the infrastructure deficit forward. You’re not building in the tax capacity to meet all these other intersections … if you don’t build it in this year, you lose it forever,” White explained.
CAO Scott Wilson said, “From a staff perspective, all things considered, Teviotdale is the next project we should do in 2018.
“We look at prioritizing projects based on a number of considerations, not just how dangerous is this intersection, how many people have been killed over a period? … We look at other projects that are going on. How do we coordinate with those? How do we limit inconvenience to the travelling public and to our residents and to the taxpayers?”
Wilson added, “There’s got to be a financial picture as well … If there’s a question on ‘Can we spend that $430,000 in the coming year?’ – no problem. There’s no difficulty getting rid of the money. However, our number one priority is, let’s do Teviotdale roundabout.”
The motion to accept the committee report was amended to state the county will proceed with construction of the roundabout.
The amendment, proposed by Bridge, was approved by a 10-6 margin.
