Sackville’s scramble crosswalks used so long they’re back in style
While both of Sackville’s intersections with traffic lights feature scramble crosswalks, in most other parts of the country, they aren’t as common.
“I know that they’re in Toronto, Vancouver, a lot of the larger municipalities have at least one,” says Steven Oliver, Stantec senior planner and smarter mobility Practice Lead for Canada.
Oliver says if you Google-search a scramble crosswalk, you’ll find images of massive intersections with hordes of people crossing.
Sackville has neither a massive amount of traffic nor pedestrians, but, according to Michelle Sherwood, Superintendent of Public Works with Tantramar, we do have the right ratio of vehicles to people to warrant the scramble crossing.
“We typically have through the school year more pedestrians than we do traffic in a small town because a lot of students are walkers” she says. “So in the case of having more pedestrians, a lot of time the scramble crosswalks are implemented because it’s a whole lot safer.”
Though, that wasn’t necessarily the reason they were or are still used in Sackville. Sherwood has worked for the municipality for nearly 30 years. When she started, the traffic lights used to be mechanical, complete with cogs and people could cross in any direction.
“We changed (the downtown traffic lights) back in the 90s, late 90s. And the town was so used to a scrambled walk that council and management of the day decided it was best put it back, for safety,” says Sherwood.… Continue