Plans are moving ahead for roundabouts on Franklin Boulevard in Cambridge, but the most controversial of the 11 circles remain in limbo.
Regional councillors voted Thursday to delay a roundabout at Franklin and Saginaw Parkway, in front of St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School.
Six roundabouts will be constructed along Franklin in 2015, with councillors waiting until those circles have been in operation for a year before finalizing plans for the remaining five intersections, including Saginaw.
“We have a cooling-off period. We can study this, we can hear from people and then we can react to that particular situation,” Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig said as councillors debated the issue.
“When you are all of a sudden confronted with 11 roundabouts in a community that doesn’t have as much experience with roundabouts as some other communities, it has a foreboding feeling in terms of what is happening.”
Several councillors, including Waterloo Coun. Sean Strickland, said they didn’t want to find themselves with another situation like at Homer Watson Boulevard and Block Line Road in Kitchener, where student Cassi Lam was hit by a bus in 2011.
“I don’t think we should replicate that same scenario in front of St. Benedict’s,” he said.
Regional staff say a roundabout would be safer at Franklin and Saginaw than traffic lights, and if the roundabout is not built, the road will have to be expanded to six or seven lanes.
The idea of running a pedestrian bridge over a roundabout at Franklin and Saginaw will also be examined before 2017.
