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Mayor Wants Proper St. Paul Street Detour

Mat Siscoe warns drivers could ignore detours and use neighbourhoods

A plea from St. Catharines' mayor that upcoming traffic detours on St. Paul Street be done properly, in preparation of the VIA rail station rebuild.

Mat Siscoe referred his colleagues on regional council to construction of the Martindale bridge, when he said people did not follow detour routes, but went through neighbourhoods.

He stressed better planning is needed this time.  "Pro-active measures are being put in place, to the north and to the south of St. Paul West, because otherwise it's going to be traffic chaos... and in one of those situations it's going to be traffic chaos next to a K-12 school."

The city says it is looking at a public information night on March 20th.

When speaking to the Martindale bridge construction and the detours put in then, Siscoe says a lot of assumptions were made of what drivers would do.

"That did not come to fruition, even though the city councillors were stating very clearly, that people are not going to follow detour routes, they're going to go through the neighbourhoods.  It created traffic chaos in purely residential streets for a number of weeks."

The mayor is hoping a planned detour for St. Paul is going to be revisited.

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