Photo: Carp and Hazeldean intersection. Via Google Maps.
After years of safety concerns at the Carp and Hazeldean intersection, the city has finally installed an advance green left turn signal.
But only for traffic turning west onto Hazeldean from Carp Road.
Coun. Shad Qadri shared an update a few weeks back in his newsletter about the new signal, but then issued a clarification: “There was miscommunication between traffic staff and myself and only the advance green travelling West on Hazeldean was activated.”
There will be no light just yet for drivers turning north onto Carp Road because “it does not yet meet the criteria warrants,” Qadri said.
He’ll be tabling a councillor’s report to the Transportation Committee on Aug. 15 to recommend the other signal be installed.
It’s been a few years now since residents really started asking questions about this intersection and whether city staff’s insistence it does not need turn signals was good policy.
Here’s a little more background on the situation — the long and short of it was that while the intersection sucked, so do a lot of other intersections. And the city doesn’t have money to fix all of them.
Here’s a summary of collision stats:
- In 2015 there were 10 collisions. Among Ottawa’s 955 intersections, it was ranked 167th, tied with 19 other locations.
- In 2014 there were 18 collisions. That was the 50th worst in the city, tied with 11 other locations.
When I was still doing the Stittsvegas podcast in 2016 (any old listeners?) we ran an interview with Tanya Hein from the Stittsville Village Association. The whole interview is unfortunately lost, but here’s a snippet:
“There’s the volume of traffic, there’s the speed of traffic… whether right or wrong, people are going faster than they should be,” she said. “And of course, the limited visibility at the intersection.”
She said the best solution would be an advance turn light for both eastbound traffic turning north onto Carp Road and for northbound traffic turning west onto Hazeldean Road.
“I’ll see a car waiting to turn left and they’re so focused on the traffic that they’re inching out and then they dart through and suddenly there’s a pedestrian there…”
“I think the city needs to look at how the intersections are being designed,” said Hein. “I think they need to get their eyes out there to actually see what’s happening in person.”
Anyway, it’s nice to see the city has come around and hopefully we’ll get the second light installed shortly. It’s been a long wait.
With the increase in traffic because of subdivisions linked to Stittsville Main Street this intersection will continue to grow in volume, perhaps some of the development fees could be directed to traffic affected in the whole community instead of just little stretches of road approaching these subdivisions, Traffic is generated in a greater degree with dense subdivisions such as those on Stittsville Main South end and many seek a link to highway 417 and public transportation is not answering the needs of KANATA and Stittsville in a way that answers those issues.
About time too, we usually travel for safety reasons north on Main and then west on Hazeldean to go to Sobey’s. The Carp / Hazeldean intersection was just too dangerous. As we said “about time”!
Not including an advanced turn light for turning left/north onto Carp road from Hazeldean is a huge fail here. With the curve in the road there that can cause limited visibility (especially if there are any vehicles turning south on Carp from Hazeldean) causes so many close calls there!