Damage to a chip truck's 'B' train trailer after contacting a downtown building. (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Doug Collins

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: Lansdowne project a nightmare to deal with

May 2, 2024 | 6:00 AM

WHEN I FIRST SAW THE PLANNED TRAFFIC DETOURS for the big Lansdowne sewer project, I thought, “This is going to be interesting.” Some of the blockages and new routes required to get past the construction zone were awkward, and it was pretty easy to see some of the corners were going to be hard to navigate, especially for big trucks and even with experienced drivers.

That was evidenced Tuesday (Apr. 30), when a semi with a “B” train scraped along the wall of a building in the 100-block of Seymour Street. The building shook for over half a minute. Many workers inside said it felt like an earthquake. The side of the semi was ripped open, and part of its load of chips spilled onto the street and sidewalk.

With this first phase of the project just underway, and lasting until the end of June, the number of tweets and the accident Tuesday would seem to indicate there may be a lot more comments coming.

I am not a traffic planner, and I don’t know if there were any better alternatives to what we’ve got, but there may have been better ways to deal with big trucks that might have meant less stress on traffic flow. There was an opportunity for community engagement in this plan, so one would assume those of us with magical solutions would have presented them already.

But let’s be realistic. The work on the major Lansdowne Street sewer upgrade had to be done. In many areas of the city, infrastructure is wearing out. To make the sewer lines available to service a wider area, this project was vital. And anytime you have to reroute traffic, there are problems.

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Those of us who criticize from the sidelines can offer all the positive and negative comments we wish. At the end of the day, though, we aren’t the ones who have to live with the second-guessing around whether they made the right move sending a chip truck onto a route that resulted in thousands of dollars in damage and could easily have been a whole lot worse.

I’m Doug Collins and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.