PORT HAWKESBURY, N.S. — The Town of Port Hawkesbury is continuing to look at ways to improve the safety of one of its most-used streets, with plans to hire a traffic engineer to recommend improvements to the road.
Granville Street is a long street that runs from intersections at Highway 104 to Trunk 4A. There are currently no stop signs or other features interrupting vehicles travelling on the roadway.
Among the issues that the town has indicated it wants to look at are speed, crosswalks, accessibility and school bus stops.
Last week the town held a public meeting where residents could offer their input into issues related to the street, with the street broken down into four pieces for discussion purposes.
The town intends to retain a traffic engineer to draft recommendations that will come back to council and the community for consideration. The consultant is expected to be hired in the short term.
“It was a really engaging session,” said Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton. “Citizens definitely came with their experiences with the street in terms of lack of safety, or issues with intersections, or challenges with the bus stops and where they’re located, especially with vehicles speeding.”
Chisholm-Beaton said some perspectives raised hadn’t previously occurred to her.
The four pieces of the street included the lookoff property at the northern-most portion of the street, which has been blocked off by boulders for a number of months due to concerns about unauthorized overnight camping; the area near the waterfront; the stretch between Pitt Street and Old Sydney Road; and the remaining section leading to the intersection with Trunk 4A.
Among the areas identified as being of particular concern are the intersections with Old Sydney Road and Pitt Street, and the area of the Royal Bank.
Town chief administrative officer Terry Doyle has said the town has a consultant allotment in its budget and he believes the Granville Street study will fall within that budget.
There have been a number of collisions, particularly at the intersection with Pitt Street, Chisholm-Beaton said.
“What can we do to ensure we can slow down the speeding and give people ample time to see that there is something coming?” she said.
The intersection at Old Sydney Road is awkwardly designed, Chisholm-Beaton said, noting there is a busy garage located at that intersection. They will look at other potential options there, including a three-way stop.
The addition of the boulders to the lookoff property has been widely unpopular and Chisholm-Beaton said there were some good suggestions from residents about ways to address the issues there.
“It’s a beautiful lookoff spot so we definitely want folks that do enjoy that space and have mobility challenges to be able to safely pull in off the street and have easy access to the grounds."
Related: Granville Street traffic to be studied
Visibility, sightlines and mobility are recurring issues at several intersections along Granville Street, particularly with the steep incline leading off of the road to Lower Water Street, Chisholm-Beaton said.
“When you are leaving Lower Water Street and turning left or right at that stop sign, visibility is very poor because of the angle you’re sitting in on that little bit of a hill,” she said. “We talked about could it be possible to have a three-way stop there.”
The section leading to the intersection with Trunk 4A is a relative straightaway, and a main concern that has been expressed by people living along it is distracted drivers, particularly due to texting. There are a number of school bus stops along the route.
