Bowness residents whose home is facing a relatively new round say it’s only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed.
The intersection of Sarcee Trail and 34 Avenue NW is now a roundabout. It used to be a T-junction.
Michelle Burke says she’s been trying for more than 18 months to get the city to put up a cement barrier to keep her and her neighbors’ homes from becoming a crash site.
“All we want is a barricade to stop the car from going off the road,” he said.
“I think it’s fair enough to leave the cars on the road (as) we’re not even asking for much.” It won’t even look as good, it will look worse, but we want it all.
The intersection of Sarcee Trail and 34 Avenue NW is now a roundabout. It used to be a T-junction. Burke says that when he bought his home five years ago, the developer promised a bike lane and walking path in front of his home, creating a space between it and the road.
Those plans appear to have been scrapped, with the roundabout coming closer to his property.
Bourque says he sees drivers speeding around the circle.
“We have people screeching tires all day, especially at night, and if someone loses control, there’s no room for error here,” he said.
“If someone goes off the road, which we’ve seen before at slower speeds, they go through our parts and that can be bad.”
Burke says he’s seen delivery vans parked on the sidewalk in front of their home.
His neighbor Eve Dejit says she fears the worst possible outcome.
“My daughter sleeps in the downstairs room and my biggest fear is that one day I’ll wake up in the middle of the night in a car with a sleeping child.”
The city is installing flexible, reflective yellow plastic barriers that residents believe won’t stop a vehicle from entering their yards if that happens.
The intersection of Sarcee Trail and 34 Avenue NW is now a roundabout. It used to be a T-junction. Bourke found orange bollards and placed them in the roundabout to deter speeding drivers.
Ward 1 Councilwoman Sonya Sharp says she has heard the concerns and will work with city staff.
“We have already made some changes,” she said in a statement.
“In the near future, we will be implementing speed limit reductions, adding more signs and working with the Calgary Police Service on further improvements.”
Tony Churchill, Mobility Safety Coordinator for the City of Calgary, says the permanent signs will be completed next week.
“To my knowledge, there are no immediate plans for other mitigating factors,” Churchill said.
“We will be monitoring it closely and looking at it, but we expect that compared to a conventional T-junction, the roundabout will operate much more safely and vehicles are probably less likely to go off the road at the roundabout as as they will not travel as far from the road because they will usually travel at lower speeds.
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