FORT FRANCES — A new intersection could be on the way for drivers in Fort Frances, which could help to relieve traffic congestion in the centre of town.
At the Oct.15 meeting of town council, a report was brought before councillors that will kick off the process of replacing the Central Avenue intersection with a roundabout.
Town administration prepared the report that details staff’s more recent work to modernize traffic assets along the west leg of the main thoroughfare, which qualifies under the province’s Connecting Links funding program, along with Scott Street through to the east end of town.
That work has now led to what Town of Fort Frances operations and facilities manager Travis Rob says is the “next most critical piece” of the puzzle, namely the traffic signal system at Central Avenue.
“The controller is well beyond useful life, the heads are past their useful life, and the wiring is a mix of above and underground, making repairs difficult,” Rob wrote in his report.
“To further complicate this matter, the intersection has no pedestrian signals on any leg. A replacement of the signals would be a major project requiring substantial design and reconstruction efforts.
"Redesign of the signals would need to be done to MTO standards and approved by MTO as was completed at Lillie Avenue.”
Rob also noted that the general design of the intersection was not optimized during the last reconstruction period, which means the town has a limited ability to improve traffic signal timing to help relieve congestion along the route.
In the report, administration detailed that the best solution to the problems at Central Avenue is to replace the intersection with a roundabout, which removes crossway lights in favour of one way traffic flow around a centralized island.
Rob wrote that a roundabout would help mitigate congestion, improve the flow of traffic through town, and reduce the town’s long-term operational and maintenance costs related to the intersection.
The town owns a large portion of the surrounding area, which would allow the town flexibility in choosing a design that would also redirect summer tourist traffic and potentially keep it separate from the main flow of traffic.
The roundabout itself also has the potential to include public art, such as statues or plantings.
The report to council noted that administration has prepared an application for the 2025/26 Connecting Links Program, which would allow Fort Frances to begin design work on a replacement for the Central Avenue intersection.
Rob wrote that the plan would include “the redesign of the intersection, signage, pedestrian protection, public consultation, and a public education component to ensure a seamless transition to the new intersection design.”
Coun. Steven Maki asked Rob about the cost to the municipality for replacing the existing traffic signal system.
Rob explained that the entire intersection would need to be reconstructed in order to address all its current needs, which include updating the traffic signal system, installing pedestrian buttons and signals, and more.
“All of the underground cabling would need to be replaced,” he said.
“Conduits, islands would have to move, lanes would have to move, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a substantial undertaking any way we look at this; there’s no doubt about that.
"I have not gone through the exercise at this point of costing that out. If we were to do that, the signals, there would be a heavy design component in that as well. So really, we have two avenues we can take; we can go down the avenue of redesigning it for replacing the signals, or redesigning it to something with a focus on improving traffic flow.”
Pressed for a ballpark estimate by Maki for just replacing the lights, Rob responded he could see the project cost in the neighbourhood of $700,000 to $1-million, 90 per cent of which could be eligible to be covered under the Connecting Links Program.
Rob also noted that he did not have an accurate estimate on possible costs for installing a roundabout at the location owing to the numerous possibilities such a design could implement, but calling it a “great opportunity” to do outreach to the public and create something “really nice.”
“Personally, I think there’s a great opportunity to do some outreach and do something really nice there, just given its location in town and the space that we have available to us,” Rob said.
“There’s a lot of unknowns that are going to come through the design in terms of what construction costs of a roundabout is going to be. I’m anticipating it’s probably going to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1-2 million to go with the roundabout option.”
Coun. Mandi Olson expressed concerns about causing traffic congestion issues in other areas of town if a roundabout was installed, particularly for eastbound traffic that could back up into the roundabout if a line formed at the Mowat Avenue intersection.
She asked Rob is a design project would take those factors into consideration to ensure that traffic was not negatively impacted in other parts of town.
Rob said that while the scope of the design project could be expanded into a municipal-wide traffic study, the age and technological limitations of traffic lights along Second Street East, which does not qualify for Connecting Links funding, means that options of streamlining the flow of traffic through town is currently limited.
“We haven’t done enough controller replacements yet, on particularly the Second Street corridor, to be able to actually stage those signals,” Rob said.
“That’s one of the stumbling blocks that we run into. If we were able to change the remaining three traffic signal controllers within that stretch [Mowat Avenue, Armit Avenue and Crowe Avenue], we would be able to stage those traffic signals and help with traffic flow outside of this particular project.
"But because we have a mix of old and new, for a number of technical reasons, we can’t properly stage those those lights.”
In that ideally staged system, Rob said that a driver maintaining the posted 50 km/h speed limit would hit every green light along the stretch once they hit the first one. With the installation of a roundabout, Rob said the other traffic signals could be looked at and incorporated into future budgets to allow for the flow of traffic through town to be optimized.
“If we build a roundabout and we get traffic flowing through Central Avenue really well, then we go through the process of replacing at Mowat Avenue, Armit Avenue and Crowe Avenue, then we can then index all of those lights along that entire corridor," he said.
Adding, "So that as you’re coming through the roundabout you’re hitting that first green light, or maybe the first red light, and then making your way down the entire corridor,”
“Then at that point, then we can start looking at what we need for the signal timing duration... to make sure that corridor flows well.”
Drivers in Fort Frances are well aware of the backups caused by summer tourists leaving the country through the International Falls Border Crossing, and Rob said design work on a roundabout could keep that issue in mind and come up with potential solutions to better handle those separate traffic streams.
“We, as a municipality, own a lot of the land around this intersection,” Rob said.
“It’s already a very large intersection, and so we really have an opportunity to do some very convenient things with lanes, lane widths, lane locations, to keep the flow of traffic happening without impact by, or to, the lineup to the bridge. We all know that there’s a lineup that goes to the bridge through most of the summer, so we can keep that in mind and plan for that through the design component.”
Fort Frances mayor Andrew Hallikas noted that Monday night’s motion was only to put the item onto the agenda so the public could see that the issue is now before council in order to promote possible public discussion. The motion to approve the submission of the application to the 2025/26 Connecting Links Program will return to council’s next meeting on October 28, 2024, for final approval.
The design work for the proposed intersection is expected to cost around $250,000, with 90 percent of the eligible cost funded through the Connecting Links Program.
Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Initiative