Residents want city to put the brakes on Rawlins Cross redesign
Some people who attended the meeting fear the notorious intersection could become more problematic
Rawlins Cross-area residents say the City of St. John's is giving them the runaround, not a roundabout.
The city hosted a public information session Wednesday night to answer occasionally testy questions about its plan to transform Rawlins Cross — where Military Road, Prescott Street and Monkstown Road meet — largely considered a bewildering place to drive.
And while neighbourhood residents who attended the meeting acknowledged the intersection has its problems, some placed the blame on the city — and fear the project will make matters worse.
"I just think people making the decisions are not people who use the intersection regularly, who may live in other parts of the city and just kind of have to go through here once in a while. And yeah, Rawlins Cross is confusing. I perfectly admit to that," said Lori Humber.
"But part of the reason it's so confusing is a lack of signage.… There's no proper signage anywhere. The signs that are there are up on the side of the road, next to the fences, probably covered by something, or if there's a big vehicle, I drive a small vehicle, you can't see that. And you can't expect people to figure out how to manouevre through an intersection without proper signage."
The city plans to remove all the traffic signals, replace them with yield signs, and close part of Military Road to traffic, creating a large roundabout — of sorts.
A video released by the city explaining how to navigate the new Rawlins Cross has been met with mixed reviews.
"I've seen … people getting hit, and [bodies] going flying," Kathie Hicks, who lives in the area, told CBC on Tuesday at the intersection itself. "It's a tough one, but they need to start somewhere."
As she described the motor vehicle mayhem she often witnesses there, a car attempting to turn left off Prescott Street wound up driving down the one-way road in the wrong direction.
"That happens all the time," she said.
Pedestrian safety was a common concern for many people who attended the meeting.
"I think it's going to make it much more dangerous for pedestrians to get across the street in the Rawlins Cross area," Don White said. "My main concern is that by removing the traffic lights, they're going to put more of an onus on pedestrians, because there's no guarantee that the traffic is going to stop."
"There's less of a likelihood that the traffic is going to stop because I would say 99.9 per cent of people, if not more, stop for red lights, but I would think that less than that percentage stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk if there are no lights."
Michelle Worthman actually lives in the Mundy Pond area, but walks in the Rawlins Cross area.
"When they're making a change like this, as someone who is walking, I want to know that a driver is not going to use the excuse that the city changed it as a reason to protect themselves when they knock someone down, and that is a concern of mine," she said.
Peter Roth, a student who lives in downtown St. John's, says the change seems to assume that without traffic signals, pedestrians won't have to wait as long to cross the road.
"It seems to me when I walk around St. John's that a lot of vehicles don't actually stop at the crosswalk right away," he said. "It seems like this might actually be hindering rather than helping.
Bob Halliday, who lives in the east end and drives west through the area, was more positive about the changes.
"I see this as a good improvement for my access down to Military Road or Prescott Street," he said. He said he'd prefer to see pedestrian signals, to batch walkers together, "rather than having them cross in dribs and drabs in a continuous stream." Overall, though, he says it'll make things safer and improve traffic flow.
