BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. The following letter was received from Paul Jafine about Bradford's traffic congestion.
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For years and years, the mayor and councillors in Bradford have talked about the gridlock in downtown Bradford. They claim that cars are stuck in traffic and farmers can’t move produce efficiently.
Whenever I have driven through Bradford I have noticed that the north-south traffic lights in Bradford stay green much longer than the east-west traffic lights.
Last week at about 1 p.m. I took notice of this imbalance since I was stopped in a line of cars at the east-west traffic lights at Holland Street West and Highway 11.
When the east-west traffic light turned green I started counting until it turned red. I counted to 21. Then I started counting until the east-west traffic light turned green. 1 counted to 59.
Since I was stopped I was able to repeat the count and I duplicated the results. It took only two rotations of the traffic lights to travel through the intersection of Holland Street West and Highway 11.
This is the intersection that the politicians in Bradford are always citing for the gridlock.
I returned the same afternoon about 2 hours later and repeated the same count. The east-west traffic light was green for a count of 23 and the north-south traffic light was green for a count of 61.
Conclusions?
My casual observations over the years were correct.
The north-south traffic lights are green approximately three times longer than the east-west traffic lights.
Considering that the traffic on the east-west road is always significantly higher than the north-south road a recalibration of the traffic lights in favour of the east-west traffic will solve most of the congestion in Bradford. Perhaps it will solve all of the congestion in Bradford. Perhaps it would eliminate the gridlock.
The Ontario government doesn’t have to spend money building the Bradford Bypass to solve the two hours of gridlock in Bradford.
The mayor has to fix the traffic light issues and the gridlock will disappear. Possibly forever.
Paul Jafine, East Gwillimbury
