Well, it certainly didn't take too long for the local enraged citizenry to marshall their forces.........
Residents of Moncton north neighbourhood fight traffic change
Residents from Magnetic Hill Estates don't want Casino Drive connected to Muirfield/Twin Oaks
Kate Letterick · CBC News · Posted: Aug 29, 2019 6:10 AM AT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/moncton-north-traffic-change-1.5263642
They were even able to get both local ward councillors and the local MLA out to their meeting. Very impressive.........
As I said before, it makes no difference how much sense the new proposed changes make, no politician is going to touch this proposal with a ten foot pole. This is a municipal election year coming up, and I remain convinced that the report proposing the connection of Muirfield/Twin Oaks to Casino Drive will be promptly and unceremoniously buried in order to improve the electoral chances of the incumbents.
I found this quoted statement from one of the attendees at the meeting interesting:
Quote:
"So we're thinking about trucks rolling down the road, drunk drivers, highway traffic,"
(The worried citizen) also worries about the kids in the neighbourhood, including her own grandchildren.
"I'm a retired school teacher. I know those little kids when they walk to school they're not paying attention, you know they're busy they're chatting some of them are on their phones,"
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1) - There should be no concerns about trucks "rolling down the road". Just designate that Twin Oaks is off limits to through truck traffic and then enforce this.
2) - I can't imagine the risk of drunks taking Twin Oaks home after a night of revelry would be that great. Is this a problem now on Mountain Road? How many car accidents have occurred on Mountain Road in the last five years as a result of drunken casino patrons???
3) - Traffic on Twin Oaks would increase, no question,
but there likely wouldn't be too much increase in
through traffic, except perhaps after a concert at the Molson Canadian Centre. Perhaps this would be a good thing however! After all, if 10% of the traffic after a concert bled off onto Twin Oaks instead, then this would reduce congestion on Mountain Road. One has to think about the big picture, rather than the concerns of a dozen residents on the artificial stub at the end of Muirfield.
4) - "But think of the children" is a standard NIMBY trope. I drive down Twin Oaks moderately frequently, and I never see kids playing street hockey there. I also see virtually no children on bicycles either. The reason? The
Northwest Trail parallels Twin Oaks along virtually it's entire length. The vast majority of cyclists (and pedestrians) take the trail. It's a safer alternative and much more pleasant.
5) - The comment about distracted children going to school is misleading. Maplehurst Middle School will be connected directly to the
Northwest Trail. So will Ecole le Sommet. Kids will be walking on the trails to get to and from school.
Increased traffic on Twin Oaks will not be a major safety issue for walking students. In fact, I would go so far as to state that safety will
improve if (once) a connection to Casino Drive is made. The reason for this is right now, a lot of traffic on Muirfield/Twin Oaks gets diverted onto Augusta Terrace because there is no connection through to Casino. The main road leading from the bulk of the northwest end to Northrup Frye School
is Augusta Terrace. As such, by providing a direct route through to Mountain Road via Casino, you will actually decrease traffic on Augusta Terrace and thus improve safety for children walking to and from Northrup Frye School.
For traffic efficiency, it is important to have a street
grid. Having discontinuous and disconnected subdivisions is the antithesis of a street grid. Instead of being able to drive efficiently from point A to point B within a neighbourhood, you instead are forced to detour to a nearby arterial (like Mountain Road). This increases emissions, increases the amount of time to get to your destination, and unnecessarily increases congestion on the arterial. NIMBY's do not care about this one iota.
An efficient grid system may actually be beneficial in planning routes for mass transit. As far as Muirfield/Twin Oaks is concerned, if there was a connection to Casino Drive, I could very easily see Codiac Transpo being interested in considering a new route (maybe even bidirectional), going down Mountain Road, turning onto Casino and then Muirfield/Twin Oaks, through the Ryan Street roundabout, Horsman Road and then finally via Berry Mills Road back downtown. A route like this would be attractive because it is fairly direct, and takes in a couple of major destinations like Casino NB and the new North End YMCA. This might be an enticement for some of the local residents currently upset by the proposed changes to consider the possibility of using the bus to get downtown. Maybe they should look at the
big picture.
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