The City of Rossland won’t be removing safety poles along Thompson Avenue in the near future, despite demands from the Citizens of Thompson Avenue (COTA) to take them down.
COTA members sent a petition and letter to the city early this month about the poles, claiming they pose a safety risk for pedestrians and cyclists and don’t slow motorists down.
Mayor Kathy Moore said the city needs to investigate the issue more to see if the poles are having an impact.
“We are are getting a data collection tool and it’s already been ordered by the city,” said Moore.
“We’ve decided we want to keep the poles in place until we can use the data collection tool to see if there’s been an impact on car speeds along the entire road.”
The poles work by narrowing sections of the road around intersections to 7.2 metres. Council installed the safety poles last summer and hoped to keep them in place for a while to see how they fared in all seasons.
“We don’t think there will be any issues with the poles in the winter. We feel our snow plow drivers are capable and have dealt with other obstacles on our roads,” said Moore.
“While we don’t anticipate any problems, we want to see how these poles work in the winter. This is the first time these poles have been set-up on any street in Rossland and it’s an experiment.”
The transportable data collector cost the city about $8,000 and will also be used on other streets.
Speed bumps or stop signs were other solutions outlined by the COTA in their letter as options that could slow motorists down.
READ MORE: City of Rossland looks to install new traffic signs, data collector along streets
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