With one exception, every major intersection on Fraser Highway from Langley City to Aldergrove is controlled with traffic signals.
The 256 Street intersection is not, and last month a local resident lobbied council to install traffic lights at the rural crossroads.
After Janet Ingram-Johnson came before council “pleading for common sense before someone gets hurt,” council ordered a report from its traffic engineers. They concluded that there isn’t enough volume to justify lights, and that after left-turn lanes were installed in 2005, the number of collisions dropped to an average of 4.8 per year.
Paul Cordeiro, the manager of transportation engineering, said that over the past five years, “only six collisions may have been preventable with the installation of lights.”
A rate of 1.2 preventable collisions per year “does not meet the minimum guideline for the installation of a traffic signal,” Cordeiro wrote. Traffic and accident data, and the small number of pedestrians, do not warrant signals, he said.
Ingram-Johnson had told council that the flashing light above the intersection is not enough, and that full signals and a crosswalk are needed.
Ingram-Johnson noted that there is a bus stop east of the intersection, but no marked crosswalk or pedestrian light. People have to run across Fraser Highway which has a single lane going east, a single westbound lane and a centre lane for left turns in both directions.
Cordeiro said that during a traffic count that lasted seven hours, only two pedestrians crossed the road at the intersection.
Noting that school buses heading for Coghlan Elementary have to cross the road without the benefit of traffic lights, Ingram-Johnson said that at busy times of the day it is “difficult and dangerous” to cross Fraser Highway.
She sometimes must wait five to 10 minutes to turn from 256 Street onto the highway, she told council.
Councillor Steve Ferguson agreed that the intersection “has been a problem for years.”
Fraser Highway is a Major Road Network street and as such the Township would require TransLink approval for improvements, even if the transportation authority refused to pay for them.
Cordeiro assured council that the intersection would continue to be monitored.