What’s a traffic light worth to you?

Opinion

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This article was published 04/09/2024 (372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What’s a traffic light worth?

No — not what it costs.

What’s it worth?

Right now, the City of Winnipeg is mulling over what it should do about a dangerous intersection at Wilkes Avenue and Elmhurst Road.

Wilkes is busy there, with something like 13,900 vehicles using the route on an average weekday.

The intersection is busy enough that it warrants having traffic lights — but that’s where you get into cost.

And the cost is staggering, because it’s not a simple installation.

As a Free Press story (City report calls for reduced speed limits on Wilkes Avenue) pointed out on Aug. 28, “it would cost $2.5 million to improve the road adequately to support (traffic lights), with ditch grading and culvert replacements to support traffic signal poles, potential adjustments to protect a water feeder main and an interconnection to the CN Railway crossing signals. Additional costs could be required to buy properties, move Hydro transmission lines and, possibly, even Hydro towers.”

But it’s even worse, because the legbone is connected to the kneebone: if the new lights actually were installed, it’s predicted that there would be increased traffic on Elmhurst, meaning there would have to be another set of traffic lights at Elmhurst and Grant.

“To be bluntly honest … I don’t foresee a traffic light being installed on Wilkes at all. It just doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint,” Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) said.

So, the plan now is to look at reducing speed limits on Wilkes, while also farming the issue out to consultants to try and determine a cheaper approach to the signalling issue.

Now, let’s talk about what traffic lights might be worth. The intersection has been a significant safety issue for seven or eight years, as traffic volumes have continued to increase on the route. It’s bad enough that the intersection is classed as one of the city’s least safe intersections, with 89 reported collisions between 2015 and 2022.

So, on average, 11 or so wrecks every year.

What’s it worth to cut down the number of accidents, or even to eliminate them?

Well, a study done in the Edmonton area in 2018 tried to quantify the direct and indirect costs of automobile collisions. The Capital Region Integrated Safety Partnership reviewed the available data to find out the reckoning.

The direct costs depended on the severity of an accident — a fatal collision was pegged at costing around $225,500, a collision with injuries at $48,341, and a minor collision at around $14,000. Direct costs include things like damage to vehicles, towing, delays for other drivers, the cost of emergency services, hospital and rehabilitation costs.

Then, there are the indirect costs — everything from lost opportunity costs for injured drivers or passengers, lost long-term income for those who are killed or seriously injured, the costs of lost earnings for quitting a job to take care of an injured loved one, and the list goes on. Those indirect costs, especially for a young person seriously injured in a crash, quickly reach into the millions of dollars.

The study calculated the average indirect costs of a fatal accident at $2.2 million per accident, and of a major accident at $89,408.

So, combined, 11 major accidents a year would carry costs of $1.5 million.

Now, the simple fact is that the city doesn’t have to bear those costs — everyone else does.

And that brings us to the $2.5-million question.

We know what traffic lights are expected to cost, and that the city will, in all likelihood, keep kicking the issue down the road.

Because of that cost.

Not because of what a set of traffic lights might be worth to all the rest of us.