Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Friday, August 24, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - When Barb Wyness contacted the city yesterday afternoon to complain about the traffic on her residential street resulting from a construction detour, she got an interesting response.

An official offered her a high-visibility vest to assist her in directing traffic by the driveway of her Taylor Road residence.

"I was not impressed," she said.

The residential street is being used as a detour while a section of Franklin Avenue between Forrest Drive and Old Airport Road is closed for construction. RTL crews, contracted by the city, are replacing water and sewer services to Ecole Allain St. Cyr and William McDonald school.

Earlier in the day, Wyness had to have her husband go and wave traffic to stop in order to get out of her driveway. She phoned municipal enforcement to see if someone could assist with directing traffic along the busy street, but they said they didn't have the resources.

"Bylaw told me they were too thin to be able to assist," she said.

She spoke with her neighbour, deputy mayor Mark Heyck, who, according to Wyness, spoke with Mayor Gordon Van Tighem to see if anything could be done.

Yellowknifer spoke with Heyck, who said that he could not comment other than to say the mayor had contacted the department of Public Works for assistance.

Wyness told Yellowknifer that she got a call from director of Public Works Greg Kehoe asking her to call back so they could "touch base" on the issue.

When she called Kehoe back, Wyness said she advised him that residents of Taylor Road were out on the street directing traffic themselves to get out of their driveways. She said Kehoe's reply was that the city could offer her a red visibility vest.

"These are the people I pay my taxes to," Wyness said, adding that she "shouldn't have to be directing traffic."

Wyness also expressed concerns over how emergency vehicles would get downtown.

Deputy fire chief of operations Darcy Hernblad said the work on Franklin has been confined to one side of the road at a time to leave a lane open for emergency vehicles.

"We worked with RTL to have a plan in place," Hernblad said. "We timed it, going around on Taylor Road to get to the downtown core, to see how it affected our response times."

Hernblad said that the Taylor route was too slow for the fire department's liking, so they arranged with the construction crews to have the dedicated lane.

"So it's business as usual for us," he said. "RTL was very co-operative in working with us."

Mayor Van Tighem also said that things were under control.

"First off, this wasn't unplanned or unadvertised," said Van Tighem. "This is work that's been scheduled by the school board for some time now."

He said he had talked with a few people regarding the situation at Taylor Road, and had heard "varying reports" on the manageability of the traffic flow.

"Some are not overly concerned, and of course, some people are inconvenienced," he said.

He added that he had spoken with the municipal enforcement division about providing some assistance and direction during peak traffic times, like the 5 p.m. rush.

When Yellowknifer ventured to Forrest Drive and Taylor Road yesterday at 5 p.m., traffic was snarled and uncontrolled all the way to Franklin Avenue and no municipal enforcement officers were present. The detour is scheduled to last until Aug. 28, and Van Tighem told Yellowknifer that this was "an initial estimate."

"We will work to improve on that," he said.