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.

At their Oct. 14 meeting, councillors voted in favour of three recommendations from consultants CBCL, who did a traffic study of the Main and Market intersection in February.

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. 

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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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.

Councillors voted this past February to spend $24,000 on the traffic study after a crosswalk collision in January 2024 sent a 79-year-old woman to hospital.

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.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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