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Road signs snarl rush-hour traffic on Dupont St.

thestar.com
June 9, 2018
Jack Lakey

The city would have us believe it’s serious about minimizing disruptions to rush-hour traffic. But that’s far from true at a busy intersection near the downtown.

At the best of times, westbound traffic is jam-packed during the afternoon rush on Dupont St., a key route for drivers fleeing the downtown core after work.

But for many months, the snarl has been worse approaching Spadina Rd., where two lanes of traffic must merge to get around road signs and pylons that occupy the curb lane and have outlived their usefulness.

Graeme Young sent us a note saying he made a request to the city in mid-April to remove the signs, and was assigned a reference number. But his report was “closed without any resolution,” while the signs and pylons remain in the curb lane.

“The sign is to warn plows to lift their blade because of steel plates ahead,” said Young. “Given that it is summer and plows will not be needed for at least five more months, the sign should be removed to allow traffic to flow better.”

It’s not much better on the west side of the intersection, where pylons surrounding a temporary traffic signal in the curb lane add to the pinch and make right turns from southbound Spadina difficult, he said.

We went there during the Wednesday afternoon rush and found two signs, one advising no left turns for trucks and another that says “trucks lift plows, roads plates in place,” along with pylons taking up most of the curb lane, just east of the intersection.

A large road plate stretches across the inner lane of westbound Dupont just past the intersection, apparently the one that snow plow operators need to watch out for.

We watched as heavy traffic edging west on Dupont had to merge into the inner lane to get around the signs, while the backup to clear the intersection was nearly two blocks long.

Surely there’s a better place for those signs. Like a storage shed, at least for the sign directed at plow drivers.

Status

We’ve asked transportation services if it can arrange to have the signs moved right away. And if not, we wanted to know why they must occupy an entire lane at the expense of efficient traffic flow.