TBM council votes to plan one-way design for Bay St. project

It took a long time, but The Blue Mountains council has approved a direction for the redesign and reconstruction of Bay Street East in Thornbury, and that direction is one-way.

At its meeting on July 15, council finally came to an agreement on how to proceed with the infrastructure and road redesign for Bay St. The decision came after multiple hours of debate and discussion that featured numerous resolutions, motions being split and voted on separately, possible reconsideration motions, the clerk’s department having to pull minutes and resolutions from previous meetings and numerous back and forth conversations between members of council and town staff.

In the end, council agreed in a 6-1 vote to direct staff to move the project forward to the 30-per-cent design stage. Staff were directed to proceed with a redesign of Bay St. into a one-way street that could feature sidewalks and a multi-use trail, but council also asked for a design option for a street with no sidewalks and trail.

Mayor Andrea Matrosovs voted against the resolution and noted that she could not support looking at the possibility of a road without sidewalks or a trail as she felt this would compromise safety.

Council’s decision will require extra efforts from staff as the town does not have a one-way street cross section in its existing engineering standards. Staff will have to invent a standard for the Bay Street project.

The Bay St. issue once again attracted plenty of public interest with two delegations speaking about the matter and multiple letters were sent to council about the project.

In addition to the reconstruction of Bay Street, the project will also include the installation of a new wastewater forcemain and new water and sewage works all in the ground under the road. The existing water and sewage infrastructure under the road is quite aged and must be replaced.

The project will see the forcemain run from the Mill Street pumping station up Bay Street to Grey Street and then up to the wastewater treatment plant on the other side of Highway 26.

At the committee of the whole meeting on July 2, council had requested more details and potential costs from staff about alternative routes for the forcemain other than Bay Street. However, this option was abandoned when council voted 5-2 against requesting those details. Councillors Alex Maxwell and June Porter were the lone dissenting votes.

Council deferred to its early decision on the matter, which was to proceed with the Bay Street route. Town staff repeatedly warned council that doing 30 per cent design work for multiple options for the forcemain route would significantly expand the project’s budget and timeline.

“You’re looking at five different options and doing the engineering for five different options,” said Alan Pacheco, the town’s operations director. “It will increase the costs.”

Deputy Mayor Peter Bordignon said asking for engineering designs for five different options was a futile gesture - considering that council had already directed staff, at the beginning of the project, to go with the Bay Street route.

“It’s going to cost a lot of time and money. We should pick something and move forward,” said Bordignon. “I don’t want to see different options. We’ve given direction.”

As the lengthy discussion drew to a close and the attempts to redesign the project on-the-fly in the council chamber were coming to a conclusion, CAO Shawn Everitt said that staff would be bringing forward a report to review how the town conducts these types of projects with an eye towards avoiding a repeat of the Bay Street debate.

Everitt noted that the town has approved Official Plan policies on walkability and connected communities, has town-wide engineering standards for road design and a Transportation Master Plan to guide decision making on these types of projects - all of which were set aside to some degree in the Bay Street decision.

Everitt said a review might be necessary “so we can actually get projects moving forward.” The CAO called council’s decisions to ignore certain aspects of its own standards - such as sidewalks on a major road reconstruction - “precedent setting.”

“We may have to reconsider our engineering standards. We’re asking the development community to do sidewalks,” he said.

Everitt said he would aim to have a report and discussion after council’s summer break.