'Streets typically get treated like a drag strip': Woodbine one of the most dangerous roads in Georgina

Georgina moving forward with speed hump pilot program for Lake Drive East, Riveredge Drive

Yorkregion.com
Jan. 16, 2023
Amanda Persico

Woodbine Avenue is still one of the most dangerous roads in town.

According to York Region’s latest Traveller Safety Report, several locations along Woodbine are listed in the top 10 most dangerous Georgina intersections.

Other than residential streets, the town’s road network consists majorly of regional roads.

Regional roads used every day by local residents include: Ravenshoe, Old Homestead, Baseline, Metro, Dalton, a portion of Black River, Pefferlaw, Kennedy and Park roads; The Queensway South; Woodbine, Warden and portions of Glenwoods and Morton avenues; High Street; and a portion of Weir’s Sideroad.

And for that reason, the town needs to be extra vocal at regional council and make the push for local road safety, said Natalie Floyd, a Keswick resident and former member of the town’s safe streets committee.

“The region deals with a lot more than just Georgina,” she said. “Our level of traffic incidents isn’t as high as other parts of the region. So, in order to get something done, we have to push more.”

According to the region’s report, Woodbine Avenue and Ravenshoe Road is the most dangerous intersection in town, with 43 reported collisions between 2018 and 2020.

That’s down from the 70 collisions reported between 2016 and 2018.

'Thank God, that was a miss': Georgina residents want to put the brakes on speeding

But that intersection doesn’t even crack the region’s top 10 list of bad intersections.

The worst intersections in the region are located in Vaughan with nearly double the number of collisions than the most dangerous in Georgina.

Other dangerous hot spots on Woodbine include: at Morton Avenue/Pollock Road, Metro Road North, and at Baseline Road; and between Deer Park Road and Metro Road North, Ravenshoe Road and Glenwoods Avenue, and between Arlington Drive and Morton Avenue/Pollock Road.

“These may not be the most dangerous intersections in the region, but they are the most dangerous to us,” Floyd said.

Many residents fear driving along Woodbine Avenue is only going to get worse as construction continues on the new Multi-use Recreation Complex (MURC) and the new 404 Logistics Park.

But the safety concerns won’t end when construction is complete, Floyd said.

“It’s already such a high traffic road,” she added. “It’s not safe the way it’s laid out. And the flow is going to be heavier.”

Looking to the future when the MURC and business park are fully operational, more needs to be done by both the region and the town, Floyd added.

“New roads have to be developed better. There has to be a smarter approach,” she said. That could mean use of roundabouts, automated speed cameras or speed signs.

The regional report also outlines a number of safety initiatives such as advance pedestrian crossing signals, right-turn restrictions on red lights, no crossing on an advance green left turn and dedicated midblock crosswalks such as the recently installed crosswalk on Baseline Road.

Safety concerns are not just dedicated for regional roads.

One of the top concerns is speeding on residential roads. “Our streets typically get treated like a drag strip,” Floyd said.

The town has a multipronged approach when it comes to road safety, ranging from visual measures (pavement markings and speed boards) to physical measures (speed limit reductions and raised crosswalks).

The town has also implemented a number of road safety initiatives including flexible bollards on a number of streets where speeding was an issue, reduced speed limits along Lake Drive and increased parking fines in the waterfront area.

The town is currently considering five different speed hump locations along Lake Drive East and Riveredge Drive as part of a speed mitigation pilot program.

During several area traffic studies, the maximum speed clocked in on Lake Drive East was 70 kilometres per hour (km/h) and 85 km/h where the speed limit is 30 km/h.

On Riveredge Drive, the maximum speeds ranged from 73 km/h to 132 km/h -- more than double the posted speed of 40 km/h.