WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21,1988, PAGE 7 PAGE SEVEN done? • "DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO GET KILLED?' Someone did!! It didn't take long after I first moved to Whitby for me to discover Athol Street. I was living in Port Whitby and if.I wanted th go to the Woolco Mall, the Oshawa Centre or points beyond, I came up Brock St., turned right at Clarence, left at Athol and it was clear sailing all the way to Dundas - no traffic, no stop signs, just a quiet residential street. Having grown up in Toronto on just such a street, I knew that the residents could not appreciate my need to get from point A to point B quickly and so I felt somewhat guilty, but human nature being what it is, expedience won out. There have been plenty of accidènts through the years on Athol St: and other streets like it. It was only a matter of time before someone got killed. Last week a five year old boy, wàs struck and killed. It didn't have to-happen. The residents of Athol ...and Green ...and Byron ...and Euclid ...and Burns ...etc. have complained long and loudly to their representatives, to council - to anyone who would listen and many that weren't - that something should be done to discourage the trafflic - that somebody was going to get killed! But nothing was done. Why? Because nobody listened! In the dynamics of municipal government, councils gets lots of complaints, comments, and suggestions. They refer them to one of their various departments for study - in this case the Public Works department - they're responsible for roads. Public works studies the situation, counts cars, reviews the statistics and the like and in due course reports back that everything's fine. But, Public Works is in the business of moving traffic, not public safety - to them accidents and fatalities are simply _part of the statistics. Their defence of the accident on Athol St. would be that the driver was within the law, had every right to be there, and that,although the accident was tragic and regrettable, there is nothing that could or should have been done to prevent it. The underlying principle that has always escaped public works and council is that traffic does not belong in residential areas. Period! Nobody should be driving on a residential street unless their destination is on that or a nearby street. All new subdivisions are designed with this in mind - new housing areas consist entirely of crescents, boulevards and courts that lead nowhere. Why should the older areas of town suffer because their roads were laid out for the horse and buggy? Sure the roads are straight and inviting but don't let anyone tell you nothing will stop the traffic. Stop signs will. A four-way stop at every intersection would make the traffic of Dundas and Brock downright inviting. And the local, collector and arterial road designations would begin to work - cars would take the shortest route (fewest stop signs) to the main road - just what they're supposed to do. And what traffic did remain would be slowed down to a reasonably safe speed. Public works will be against it, of course, because they're in the business of moving traffic. Whitby has a profoundly traffic oriented bureaucracy and unfortuneately there are no counterbalancing officials whose job it is to defend public safety. Ideally, of course, the politicians we elect to represent us should be doing this but they don't. Ratepayers groups have filled the role in other communities but, surprisingly, in the old part of town where the problem predominates, there are no ratepayer groups. It was the ratepayers in Toronto that finally turned the tide and made the politicians listen. (At their peril, as some discovered.) Four-way stop signs on the street I grew up on turned a road that you couldn't cross in rush hour into a relatively quiet street. In another part of town, ratepayers pushed through an innovative grid of one-way streets (they change direction every other block) that makes through traffic impossible. In other areas, road closures have produced the saine sort of cul-de-sacs that all the new subdivisions have. And where did the cars go? On to the main streets where they were supposed to be. Did the traffic jams get worse? Probably a little bit - which then forced the politicians to make the improvements to the arterial roads that they should have anyway. There wili be those who will argue that taking traffic off the residential streets will mean that downtown streets will have t be widened and that would destroy downtown. That's the kind of perverse self-serving argument tbat bureaucrats use to justify the status quo. A good proportion of the traffic going through downtown presently doesn't belong there and with a little better planning wouldn't be. It belongs on Thickson and Rossland (when they get around to extending it westward) and Consumers (when they get around to extending it te Brock). It does not belong on Athol ...or Byron ...or Euclid...or... Will somebody ele have to get killed! before something is husbands exhibition ý 1 1 BALDWIN STREET LOOKING NORTH FROM CAMPBEL STREET, BROOKLIN, 1907 The building at left is the Brooklin House Hotel which was built about 1886 and since 1970 has been the Brooklin legion hall. The large brick building beside it is the T. J. Holliday dry goods store, the largest in Brooklin. Whitby Archives photo 10 YEARS AGO from the Wednesday September 20, 1978 edition of the WHITBY FREE PRESS • Five hundred production workers at Dayton Tire went on strike on Sept. 13. • A 16-year-old Whitby lacrosse player has been charged with assault causing bodily harm at a game in Oshawa. • Whitby artist William Smith presented one of his paintings to the Whitby Public Library at its official opening last week. • Andrew Antenna President Richard Matthews was honored by his company prior to moving to Scotland. 25 YEARS AGO from the ThursdaySeptember 19, 1963 edition of the WHITBY WEEKLY NEWS * Candidates for the Sept. 25th provincial election are: Sam Hollingsworth, Liberal; Dr. Matthew Dymond, Conservative and Tom Edwards, New Democratic Party. • Town Council will hire an architect to design a new fire hall downtown. • The Town of Whitby plans to plant 200 trees on local streets this fall. • The Whitby Municipal Building, constructed in 1960, is featured in the American publication "Architectural Forum." 100 YEARS AGO from the Friday, September 21, 1888 edition of the WHITBY CHRONICLE • The Province of Manitoba is sending an exhibit to the Whitby Fair, in October. • Railway conductors are complaining that farewell kisses from wives to embarking for Toronto are making the trains run late. • Members of the Grand Jury want payment of $3 a day. • William Barnes is working hard to complete the construction of the new buildings on Garden Street in time for the fall fair.