My office has received concerns from residents in the community with regards to being able to safely turn left from Tenth Line Road to Vanguard Drive. Specifically, it is difficult for a left turning vehicle to see on-coming traffic when there is a vehicle in the opposing left turn lane.

City staff have developed a plan that would change the operation of the traffic signal from current operation where vehicles turn left on a green ball to one where vehicles can only turn left with a left turn arrow. At all other times, a left turn vehicle would face a red ball (similar operation to a vehicle turning left at Innes and Tenth Line).

The benefit of this change will be that a left turning vehicle will have the right of way to make the turn and will not need to wait for a gap in opposing traffic to make the turn as is the case today.

However, with this enhanced safety benefit, it will increase delays to make the left turn especially at times of the day when opposing traffic is light or when there are no vehicles in the opposing left turn lane and therefore no sightline issues. This increased delay could be in the order of 30 seconds to a minute.

In order to implement this change, the existing northbound left turn lane needs to be extended by about 30 m to accommodate for increased length of left turning queue (the southbound left turn lane does not need to be lengthened as it is long enough to accommodate the increased queue length).