Mountain Road between Woodhaven Court and Front Mountain Road is being converted back to four lanes.
Councillor Bryan Butler says the recent changes in North Moncton, that reduced the road to three lanes, with the addition of bike lanes just didn’t work, “We have the busiest tourist attraction, we have one of the busiest service stations that trucks come in and out of. This is probably the busiest area of the city and it keeps growing and growing and growing. So to me, we tried it, and it just doesn’t work.”
But Mayor Dawn Arnold disagreed, “With all due respect to Councillor Butler and what he has seen out there, I have also seen young children out there riding there bikes to the Zoo or Magic Mountain, and it is awful and it is their only way to get there.. To take it back to four lanes and not allow for any sort of bike lanes, to be in direct contravention of our Destination 2040, that just doesn’t make any sense to me. “
Councillor Charles Leger introduced an amendment to Councillor Butler’s motion, hoping to have Engineering take a look, and possibly come up with other alternatives, but a vote for the amendment was defeated.
“I think if we give it a little more time, we just lowered the speed limit last week. The intention is if we were given a bit of time here we would get staff out there to do counts to observe if it is working. If there are things we need to change, it would give us the opportunity to come back and discuss that with council,” Director of Design and Construction Alcide Richard says.
The final vote was five for and five against Butler’s motion to have the road returned to its original state. In the case of a tie, the motion passes.
The changes to Mountain Road were first made as part of the Regional Sustainable Transportation Master Plan (Destination 2040).
Under Destination 2040, four lane roads with traffic counts under 20,000 vehicles per day are candidates for a “Road Diet”.
Benefits of a Road Diet include reducing vehicular speeds, reduced collisions and injuries and improved mobility and access.
