Every time he leaves work, Stephen Wardlaw obsesses over turning right or left onto Industrial Ave. near St. Laurent Blvd.
“It’s terrible. The traffic is coming in the other way, you come out, you put your signal on, there’s nobody there,” said Wardlaw.
“By the time you go to pull in, there’s all kinds of traffic coming the other way. And they’re always speeding.”
Wardlaw’s office is near the bus entrance to the city’s $90 million OC-Transpo garage on a dangerous curve.
Wardlaw has been working in the area for about four years and said he sees accidents — with and without buses — all the time.
And he’s not alone.
“So far I’ve seen three (bus accidents) since the building opened in the fall,” said Joe, who didn’t want his last name used.
That includes a collision between a backhoe and a city bus around 7:30 a.m. Monday.
Both men wonder what the city plans on doing about it and if installing a traffic light would help.
The speed limit on the strip between St. Laurent Blvd. and Russell Rd. is 70 km.
But drivers create their own rules, the men say.
“There’s cars here, they’ll go 90, 100 (km). And I never see the police out here,” said Wardlaw.
Safety is a concern for everyone involved.
“That would be a difficult area to do speeding enforcement because it’s four lanes wide,” said Sgt. Mark Gatien, adding it’s not safe for his staff to set up shop on the strip.
In 2010, 437 tickets were issued by Ottawa Police on Industrial Ave., but they weren’t necessarily for speeding.
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Kelly Roche - Storyteller 