Residents seek more street lights on Green Lane in East Gwillimbury

When it rains or snows, visibility along Green Lane, near Newmarket, is at its worst. Residents want town to put in street lights.

Yorkregion.com
December 13, 2018
Amanda Persico

Every day, Emiley Sheppard drives along Green Lane --just like thousands of commuters.

She drives her son to school. She drives her client’s dogs from doggie daycare to the dog’s home.  She drives in the dark as there are no street lights along Green Lane.

“Safety is paramount,” she said. “It’s very hard to navigate safely on Green Lane in the evenings. And it becomes much harder in the pouring rain or snow.”

Emiley and her husband Chad, run Sheppards Dog Daycare, offering a pickup and drop-off service for their clients. Driving along Green Lane is part of their every day.

“How could you not think it was a problem?” said Chad of the lack of lighting. “Having no lights is just as bad as anything else, especially along a major vein in the town.”

Not everyone has the same skill set as a driver, he added, so the roads need to be as safe as possible. But when it rains or snows visibility on that stretch of busy road is at its worst.

“You see it all the time,” he said. “People veer into other lanes because they don’t know where the lines are. I don’t know how Green Lane still doesn’t have lights.”

According to the town’s transportation master plan, on average Green Lane carries between 20,000 and 30,000 cars annually.

The region, on the other hand, maintains streets lights at all intersections along regional roads, whether or not there are traffic signals, said Doug MacKay, engineering manager for transportation services at York Region.

Adding Lighting in between the traffic signals along Green Lane is within the town’s crosshairs but pining down a time frame is a little more complicated.

Green Lane’s final cross section --the total number of lanes, sidewalks and public transit connection --have yet to be decided.

The town is currently working on its secondary plan for Green Lane, said the town’s general manager of community infrastructure and environmental services, Mike Molinari.

“There’s uncertainty around what Green Lane will look like,” he said. “This is the evolution of the municipality.”

Ideally, there would be street lighting across the full length of Green Lane, he added. But to put them in now would be “fiscally irresponsible”.

No to mention putting in street lights now would mean ripping up the existing road.

“Adding lights now would be out of sequence and piecemeal,” Molinari said.

So, residents would have to wait until there is a major reconstruction project to get lighting.

At the request of the local municipality, sidewalks and street lights would be incorporated as part of a major construction project, such as reconstructing or widening the road, MacKay added.

Local residents asked on social media why there are lights --some argue there are too many --along 2nd Concession.

According to Molinari, 2nd Concession is closer to future residential development than Green Lane is and the reconstruction project was also to accommodate for the Upper York Sewage System.

“2nd Concession is in its final form,” Molinari said. “Infrastructure does not happen overnight.”

While Green Lane is not part of the region’s 10-year forecast, Molinari said, the thoroughfare is on the town’s list.

Filling the gap in lighting townwide is included in the town’s transportation master plan, which is currently underway and will be available for residents to comment in the spring.