Skip to content

Petition started to install traffic light at Jim Smith/HWY 3 intersection

71 signatures collected on first day
11834542_web1_traffic-petition-2

Paul Rodgers

A Cranbrook resident has started a petition to the Highways Department for them to install a traffic light, with pedestrian crossing light, at the intersection between Jim Smith and Highway 3/95.

“So my concern is the speed,” said Jim Horner, the man behind the petition who has lived in that area since 1994. “When you go from one end of the town, when you come in from the north end, your first traffic light is 0.6 kilometres after the 60 kilometre an hour zone starts.

“When you come in from the south your first traffic light is the King Street traffic light, which is quite a ways. There’s also heavy traffic that turns into the Cardlock Industrial Fuel Depot by the Elizabeth Lake Lodge and traffic trying to merge. So if there was a light it would be safer for people going across as far as pedestrians it would be safer for people that are using that intersection on a daily basis to either go to work, take their kids to school, shop, that kind of thing.”

Horner posted up with a table wearing a high-visibility vest by the mailboxes between Cobham and the railroad tracks. On Thursday, May 10 he collected 71 signatures in about two and a half hours, and plans to be out again on Friday between 9:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

“Lots of enthusiasm from the people that live in this area,” he said, “[comments like] ‘long time coming, hope it comes soon.’”

Horner has to use that intersection every day and said he feels as though the problem is getting worse.

“It has been an issue and what happens is you’re trying to turn, you’re counting on the traffic to be going the speed limit which rarely is happening and if you’re pulling out because you can see that there’s enough time and somebody else is coming around those vehicles and passing at a high rate of speed, you can’t see them until it’s too late, you’re already out there.”

While he hasn’t been involved in an accident there personally, he has witnessed them firsthand and has had numerous close calls. He’s also seen traffic markers knocked over on more than one occasion.

He hopes to install a traffic control light instead of just having a two way stop, from Elizabeth Lake Sanctuary coming on to the Highway 3/95 and also from the Jim Smith Lake turnoff, where there is a stop sign and merge lane going the opposite way.

“It would be great if the Highways Department would be able to put in a traffic light there with a pedestrian light also because there’s a lot of people that are going back and forth, either to Elizabeth Lake or to that side of Cranbrook.”

11834542_web1_Traffic-petition-3