Heather Wright/The Independent

The big question residents have about a roundabout at London Line and Forest Road is when will it be built.

Lambton County started looking at the corner after both the public and the politicians raised concerns in 2021. Watford’s Bob Hollingsworth died in a crash at the corner in September 2020. Then, in 2021, a motorcyclist was airlifted to hospital with serious injures.

That prompted the family of Hollingsworth to mount a campaign to get the county to upgrade the intersection. 

Stephanie Cattrysse found there have been more than 31 accidents at the corner in the last 10 years. One took her step-dad’s life; another, the life of a good friend in Warwick Township, Brenda Rogers.

Ruth Downie, Hollingsworth’s sister, was part of the effort. 

“We went up and down the streets in Watford getting signatures.” 

Downie and her sisters, Shelley Holbrook, and Kathy Shea, were in the front row as the county’s consultant held a public meeting about the roundabout project Monday. About 30 people looked through the plans and listened to Steve Taylor’s report.

Taylor told the group the two roads are built to provincial standards, and that could be part of the issue.

“These roads had characteristics that provided great safety and led to driver expectations of higher operating speeds. Oftentimes, when people travel on those roads, they can have periods of distracted driving, whether it’s on the phone, it’s eating food, adjusting the radio, sometimes they’ve missed some of the clues that were provided to them for changing their operating speeds and appreciating the risk approaching an unsignalized intersection,” he says.

But Taylor says there is not enough traffic along the road to warrant stop lights but roundabouts don’t need to meet traffic count thresholds.

“It can provide benefits of both traffic flow as well as safety. It’s a perfect fit for this intersection,” he says.

The roundabout will be shifted slightly north and Taylor says only a minimal amount of land will need to be acquired.

“It fits, it’s safer and it provides better traffic service,” Taylor says adding the speed in the single-lane, oversized roundabout is about 35 km per hour. That means there would not be high impact accidents which lead to fatalities.

While some roundabouts are controversial, the main questions from the crowd were about the actual construction. Garth Smith, who lives near the intersection and has seen a number of fatalities since he moved to Lambton, wanted to know when it was starting.

Taylor says that if everything goes smoothly, construction could take place in the summer of 2025. 

Others questioned whether the road would be closed during the 12 to 14 week construction; Taylor says the east-west traffic on London Line will get through most of the time however the north-south access will be closed.

Taylor added the roundabout will be large enough for large farm equipment to manoeuver through.

Smith is happy the project is moving forward. “It’s a good idea. I’ve manoeuvred lots of them. They’re good, especially the single lane ones.

So is Shelley Holbrook, Bob Hollingsworth’s sister.  

“You don’t want somebody else have to go through what we’ve gone through.”