We have a problem with crosstown traffic in Charlottetown, particularly in the busy commercial north end of the city. If I’m traveling out North River Road, once I pass Belvedere Avenue my eastbound options are limited. Since you can’t access the bypass from Lower Malpeque, it is a full 3.5 km from Belevedere to the next east-west corridor (Sherwood Rd.) that will take you all the way to Mt. Edward Rd. The only other option is to crawl through the parking lots of Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire on Buchanan Drive, through the Charlottetown Mall, and out the private road on the east side of the mall. The owners of this private road actually exert their rights to the property by closing the road one day a year to ensure it does not get taken into the public domain. Public access to this road could disappear at any time and then where would we be?
The City spent a considerable amount of money upgrading the Peter Pan intersection a few years ago but it is still essentially a 3-way intersection, with Spencer Drive being under-used, mainly as a secondary entrance to to the mall or the Superstore. And again, you still need to weave your way through the busy mall/cinema parking lot to get to Mt. Edward from Spencer.
With the anticipation of development on the adjacent land north of Spencer Drive, I believe it is time for the City to start making plans to extend this road to the east, directly out to Mt. Edward Rd. It would vastly improve the flow of crosstown traffic, service future development, and improve the safety in the parking lots that are currently misused as a means of getting from one side of town to the other. I think it’s good long term infrastructure planning and also solves a number of immediate issues.
I’ve discussed this with residents from every corner of the city, with several other councillors, and city planning staff. I was surprised by the level of agreement on the issue. A number of people have also written letters to the editor recently about this issue. See here, here, and here (there was another by Bruce Garrity, but I can’t seem to find it).
Please do it!
The City has already messed up another potential cross-town route, from Exhibition Drive, through Beazley through Allen, through Kirkwood, by allowing a new seniors complex to be built on Kensington Road across from the end of Exhibition, rather than aligning Exhibition and Beazley and putting in a light to get across Kensington. Also, the roundabout won’t help that route, either!
The route I used to take, Park to Belmont to Mt. Edward to the Ag farm private road (Ravenwood) to University Av. to Belvedere was ruined by a realignment on Park, and the closing of the private road to through traffic.
Going across town by any route that uses Belvedere corner is a non-starter, as the lights take forever.
The only other possibility is Garfield/Palmers Lane/Mt. Edward, and Belvedere, but it’s a tad on the twisty side.
For those of us who work (and shop) in West Royalty, and live in Stratford, extending Spencer would be a godsend!
Since the realignment of the Peter Pan intersection Spencer drive is a literal tourist trap. Take a look at the end of Spencer drive any day of the summer and you’ll see vehicles that have driven straight from the bridge to a dead end.
Despite a very large volume of people visiting to read this post, most of the commentary was on Twitter and it was overwhelmingly (I believe unanimously) positive. I think it should be a priority for the city, but it’s an expensive project and complicated to acquire all the land. And that’s only if we can get a consensus on council to pursue the project. Next year is an election year. Having never served on council during an election year, I have no idea what that will mean in terms of what priorities bubble to the surface.