It’s a cool Saturday morning as I write this in Clarenville. The temperature is hovering at the 5 degree mark. At this hour, on Harbour Drive, crews from a paving company are in the process of repaving damaged
parts of the road. This “scratching and patching” as it is known, started
Thursday morning. Numerous pieces of
equipment and numerous people swarmed over the road at the Huntley Drive
intersection – at 8:30am. 10’s of
vehicles, including school buses full of children were lined up to get in the single entrance way to Riverside school and 10’s of vehicles were lined up trying to
get out. It was, for anyone caught in it, anarchy.
Exactly one week before Council crews were busy doing a
similar road repair in the middle of the intersection of Memorial and Manitoba Drives
– again at 8:30 am at the height of morning traffic, causing further traffic
anarchy and making a dangerous situation for Council crews.
Arguably these jobs are necessary and have to be done some
time. They will invariably cause delays for drivers, but would it be too much
to ask that someone be tasked with considering when the work should best take
place to a) provide the highest level of safety to workers b) allow for the
best possible results of the work and c) minimize inconvenience?
Good sense and good planning by a person tasked with doing
this planning would certainly go a long way to enhancing safety, ensuring
quality work (pavement does not stick and bind well in cold weather) and
minimizing pedestrian and driver inconvenience through communication.
I argued for these in my pre-budget consultation to Council – these couple
of incidents support my point.
Regardless
if the work is Council or contracted the onus is on the Town to ensure that:
a) all
work done meets these safety, quality and convenience standards
b) and citizens are informed when and where the work will be happening.
It’s
our job as citizens to ensure that our elected officials do that.
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