Region of Queens councillors have voted to move ahead with changes at the three-way stop at Main and Market streets in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)
The Region of Queens is going ahead with changes to the three-way stop in downtown Liverpool to address safety concerns from pedestrians and motorists.
Those are: removing the separate westbound or right-turning lane on Main Street in front of the post office and adding a curb extension to shorten the crosswalk distance; adding tactile walking surface indicators to warn visually impaired pedestrians they’re entering or leaving a crosswalk; and removing or changing some of the parking near the intersection.
Mayor Scott Christian said after the meeting that council wants Director of Infrastructure Adam Grant to come back with a plan.
Christian said he’s eager to see what could happen with the parking spaces. The region’s traffic study found that some collisions and near-collisions were caused by people entering or leaving the angled spots outside the post office.
“I’ll be interested to see what staff come up with in consultation with some experts to figure out what some other options for reconfiguration could look like there.”
CBCL representatives told councillors in July that the intersection can handle current and future traffic volumes without installing traffic lights.
The busy intersection has caused safety concerns for years. Council has returned to the issue repeatedly in the past without settling on a solution.
CBCL had asked staff whether the region wanted the study done during warmer weather in the spring when traffic activity would be higher. The region’s response was that the consultants should use their best judgement.
Deputy Mayor Maddie Charlton asked Grant whether the recommendation against traffic lights would have been different if the consultants had come later in the year. Grant said their conclusion about lights would have been the same.
“I think it was a valid point to be raised,” Christian said, “but I’m satisfied that our director of infrastructure felt that the methodology was appropriate.”
Christian said he’s not sure when council will see a plan for the changes at Main and Market streets. But it would have to be accounted for in next year’s budget before the work could begin.
A consultants report does not recommend installing traffic lights at the Main and Market intersection in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)
A study of the troublesome three-way stop in downtown Liverpool has found traffic isn’t that bad and that it doesn’t warrant installing traffic lights.
Engineering firm CBCL presented its findings to council this week about the intersection at Main and Market streets.
“We found overall that the intersection has sufficient capacity for the current traffic volumes and the future traffic volumes with the current stop control configuration. We found that the traffic signals are not warranted,” David Copp, a transportation engineer with CBCL who conducted the on-site traffic study in February, told councillors at their regular meeting Tuesday.
Copp said that opinions about the intersection are mixed. While some pedestrians and business owners believe there’s no problem, others told him it is hazardous.
“There was a number of folks who identified that cars or trucks were not yielding to pedestrians. They were sort of blasting through the stop signs and just ignoring any pedestrians who were waiting. There definitely seems to be a bit of a lack of trust on the part of the pedestrian that vehicles will actually stop where they’re supposed to when they approach the intersection.”
Collision data for the area is very limited. There have been 36 reported collisions within a 100-metre radius from 2009 to 2024. Most of those were vehicle collisions. Five of them involved pedestrians.
“So it made it very challenging to draw any conclusions or highlight trends or causation between these incidents,” he said.
Overall, the study found traffic flow and vehicle speeds were within acceptable limits. And it also found that five new housing developments planned for the Mount Pleasant area just outside downtown Liverpool won’t make volumes a problem in the next 10 years.
Copp said some changes could make the area safer for pedestrians.
He said combining the through and right-turning westbound lanes at the post office on Main Street would shorten the crosswalk there and improve visibility.
There would still be an issue of cars entering and leaving the angled parking spaces next to the post office. He said most of the collisions in the area were related to those spaces and that council should consider removing or reconfiguring them.
The intersection has been the scene of lots of close calls over the years.
District 5 Coun. Jack Fancy said he doesn’t believe combining westbound lanes on Main Street is enough to protect pedestrians.
“We’ve had people hit and I think due diligence, if we just walk away from this and say we’re going to combine those two lanes, I don’t think we’re doing our job,” he said.
“I can live with the car to car (collisions), you can fix those. Car to pedestrians, you can’t fix. So I think the car to pedestrian is our biggest concern.”
He wants to see some kind of pedestrian-activated signal to alert drivers when somebody wants to cross.
District 4 Coun. Vicki Amirault said the intersection and the sidewalk approaches have to be improved to be more accessible for people with visual, hearing or mobility impairments.
“It’s very scary to go through that intersection for pedestrians, very scary. So I think there’s a lot of work we have to do there, and if it doesn’t warrant traffic lights, maybe put up the lights for the signals for the pedestrians. But I think this is a situation where we really have to do a lot of a lot more conversation, a lot more work. We just cannot leave it the way it is.”
Deputy Mayor Maddie Charlton told QCCR after the meeting that even though the traffic count was done in February, when numbers would be typically lower, she said it still gives a good baseline for council to consider.
“And so our conversation with that particular intersection, I think, is far from over, and we should consider if there’s any improvements that we can make to the parking there (at the post office), how we make that the best it can be, given the information that was presented today.”
People participate in a walk audit near the Thomas H. Raddall Library off the White Point Road in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)
People took to the streets this week to brave some cool and wet conditions, and traffic, to get an idea of how safe it is for walkers around the new Liverpool library location.
Hike Nova Scotia held a walk audit in the area. Program manager Catherine Droesbeck said the organization has done about 15 walk audits around the province through its NS Walks program. But this was the first one for Liverpool.
The Region of Queens asked the group to hold the event to help get community input on how to encourage people to use active transportation, like walking and cycling, to get to and from the library.
“We’ve been doing walking audits now for the past nine months or so all over the province in communities big and small, who are all interested in improving the experience for pedestrians in getting around their communities,” Droesbeck said in an interview.
“Then we’ve been going in and helping them do the audit, which gives us some good data in terms of people’s experience, but also it’s a great way to engage community with government officials and other organizations to bring people together to say, ‘This is what we love about our community, but this is how we we’d like to make it better.’”
About 15 people participated in the walk audit, which took participants on a two-kilometre route from the library, along Harley Umphrey Drive, up to White Point Road, along Payzant Street, across Parker to Union, over to Waterloo and back to the library.
Morgan MacDonald, the region’s new physical activity co-ordinator, said walking is one of the most popular and accessible forms of physical activity.
“And one of the barriers to walking for many people is safety,” he said.
“So having a walkability audit allows us to take a certain portion of the region, which is around our new library location in Liverpool, and looking at the accessibility and the barriers to active transportation around this location and tying it into the existing infrastructure of the town of Liverpool. So by trying to address some of the barriers to people walking and rolling, we’re hoping that they’ll feel comfortable and confident to make that part of their everyday life.”
When participatns got back to the library, they were asked to rate the route on various factors, such as traffic, sidewalks, crosswalks and safety, out of an overall score of 120. Most were in the 40 to 50 range, with one as high as 92.
They said that even though there are no sidewalks on roads around the library, the shoulders are wide enough in some areas for walkers. But they added that the unevenness of the unpaved shoulders would make it difficult for people in wheelchairs to navigate.
They also talked about the lack of clearly marked crosswalks on the route, and suggested installing crosswalk flags at certain intersections.
When regional council decided to move the library from downtown to the new location, residents were concerned about safety because the area has no sidewalks and limited lighting.
Sylvia Hurley of Liverpool was one of the walkers. She says she loves to walk, but it can sometimes be hazardous.
“And I have a lot of concerns about areas of walking, crosswalks, how walkers are treated locally, not stopping at crosswalks, not paying attention to us. I wanted to express my concerns big time,” she said on the route.
“I used to walk out on this street (White Point Road), but I haven’t walked here for a very long time. It’s dangerous, very dangerous. It’s narrow. But I’m fortunate because I can come up George Street from my house and be to the library which suits me. I don’t have to come out on to this road, but not everyone’s that fortunate.”
Hurley said she thinks the walking audit is a great idea.
“But if they’re going to do an audit, do the audit but honour what people say. Don’t just, ‘Oh yeah, they complained about this, they complained about that.’ Let’s do something about it.”
Hike Nova Scotia’s Droesbeck said responses from the walk audit will be compiled in a report to the municipality.
“I think we identified some, what we’ll call low-hanging fruit today, that the community can do that will go a long way to make people feel safer when they’re walking this particular route. So whether it’s marking the crosswalks better, looking at speed limit signs, more some benches and things that will make it look more like, OK, people want to walk here and walk safely. So I think there’s some possibilities there.”
The region’s MacDonald said this was only the first of a few community consultations about active transportation, including walking and cycling. More are planned this summer through Cycling Nova Scotia in Caledonia, Greenfield and again in Liverpool.
He said the results of this week’s walk audit are important to highlight for regional staff and council the community’s concerns about walking in the area.
“So it was looking at how all of these different systems interact and how we can make infrastructure and spaces that work for everybody and encourage healthy activity and safe activity in our community.”
