FORT FRANCES — Council has decided to go ahead with the design phase of a potential roundabout in Fort Frances, though larger concerns still linger.
At Monday night’s meeting for the Town of Fort Frances council, the application to the Connecting Links Program for funding to come up with a design to replace the aging Central Avenue intersection returned to the agenda.
At the previous meeting, this application was met with concerns over cost and regular traffic flow, as well as the ability to integrate with the town’s other pieces of aging traffic infrastructure and managing summertime bridge traffic. At that meeting, councillors asked operations and facilities manager Travis Rob for more details around alternatives, upgrades, cost and more.
In this meeting, with nearly two weeks to dig deeper and hear from residents, Rob was faced with more questions, but also some comments of additional support.
Coun. Wendy Brunetta noted she had received phone calls from people expressing concerns with a proposed roundabout, particularly in relation to large trucks navigating the circle amidst regular traffic.
Fresh off a recent trip to Europe, where she said she had the opportunity to experience a number of roundabouts on a large bus, she said she had discussed with these callers how, with proper design, impacts of large trucks or other vehicles through a roundabout could be addressed.
“I think if they’re built properly, designed properly, there should be no issues,” Brunetta said.
“I support this project. I look forward to the design. I think it’s going to be a little challenging to design it given the busyness of that intersection, our American border traffic issues. I think it’s doable, I’m sure there’s other municipalities with similar issues so I look forward to that.”
Rob reiterated to council that this application to the Connecting Links Program is for design work only, meaning that a future application to the program would be necessary if council then decides to go ahead with the proposed design.
Coun. Steven Maki highlighted a line in the report that said if funding was successful, then the town would be going ahead with the roundabout, and maintained that he was not in favour in light of a lack of “conversation about any kinds of numbers, pros and cons, anything.”
Additionally, Maki expressed doubt that spending “hundreds of thousands” of dollars on the roundabout would indeed help to alleviate traffic congestion, as the report suggests it would.
Maki said he spent some time driving through town and timing the trips, and he said he felt the amount of time saved by speeding up Central Avenue wouldn’t be worth the cost.
“An example being westbound traffic on Second Street that gets a red light, must wait a maximum of one minute, 60 seconds, to get a green,” Maki said.
“I did that. I got to that intersection and just got the red light. 60 seconds later I got a green. So my whole travel was delayed 60 seconds. Realigning the traffic lights along Second Street to improve flow is interesting.
"I did four trips from The Harbourage to Fort Frances GM. The quickest trip was six minutes and 45 seconds with only two red lights. The longest trip was nine minutes and five seconds with six red lights, out of a total of eight on that whole route, the average being seven minutes and 30 seconds and 4.5 red lights. So from what I’m seeing, shaving a maximum of 60 seconds off of a seven minute and 30 second cross town trip at the expense of several hundred thousand dollars makes me hesitant.”
Maki noted he has also spoken with two local trucking companies who are also not in favour of a roundabout replacing the intersection. In light of the potential cost of a replacement of the intersection as the town continues to face increasing financial demands in the budget, Maki maintained he felt it would be more prudent to replace the lights and spend money on existing infrastructure and re-examine a roundabout in the future when the town’s financial situation had potentially improved.
“I believe that the priorities of the town should be with things that we must have, such as maintaining existing roads like York Avenue, where I drive on it at 10 kilometres an hour, which is 11 kilometres an hour too fast,” Maki said.
“You have to almost go in a ditch to have a smoother ride. ‘Must have’ needs to supersede ‘nice to have.’ Having said all this for now, I am not in favour of creating this roundabout.”
Coun. Firth posed several questions about the logistics of the roundabout, as well as the costs involved with operating and maintaining it throughout the years.
Rob responded by reiterating that the intersection needs to be replaced one way or another in the near future, either through a complete redesign of the existing intersection or through a newly designed roundabout.
He said he felt the roundabout would be the better option as it would improve traffic flow with regular traffic and the border traffic and overall cost the town less in the long run due to reduced maintenance costs, including winter care.
“There’s nothing special operationally that we need for maintaining a roundabout, snow removal, street sweeping,” Rob said.
“There’s enough case studies across Canada, the United States, Europe, where there are actually some excellent guides on how to best plow a roundabout based on the roundabout geometry, snow removal equipment, etc, etc.
"So there’s lots of resources out there to help us kind of get used to that new intersection for plowing, bearing in mind that the intersection we’re talking about is huge right now in terms of snow removal. You pass through that with a grader with a wing down, you haven’t cleared half the snow off of it. So there definitely is nothing more challenging, I don’t think, about snow plowing at a roundabout versus what we currently are trying to deal with at Central Avenue.”
While Rob stressed that this phase of the application is for design purposes only and that council could choose to not go ahead with the design in the event it was not up to council’s satisfaction.
Some councillors expressed their support for that; Town of Fort Frances CAO Marcel Michaels cautioned councillors against leaning on this route to determine if the members overall wanted a roundabout.
“This report doesn’t recommend to just get the design and then change your mind later,” he said.
“If you’re going to spend a quarter-million dollars of taxpayer money, although only 10 per cent directly funded from our reserves or our money, and 90 per cent via other avenues, is still a quarter of a million dollars.
"So I don’t recommend to use this approach to find out if we want to do it. I would do another approach and get more data, more information from administration at a way lesser cost, to find out if a roundabout is needed here.”
In the end, council agreed to the report, which authorizes administration to submit the application to the 2025/2026 Connecting Links Program for the redesign of the Central Avenue intersection to a roundabout design.
Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Iniative
