North Perth Council discussed the ongoing downtown traffic issues in Listowel this week.
Julia Salvini, the president of Salvini Consulting, said the brunt of the traffic issues stem from the main intersection downtown, which often sees delays because of the lights and the backup of traffic that is created.
Salvini said there are some long term solutions being discussed right now as part of North Perth’s Traffic Plan.
“Two sort of sets of solutions that we talked about for the longer term would be developing alternate routes for trucks to get them out of the downtown," she said. "There’s a very high percentage of trucks through that intersection.”
Salvini also said council could try to someday acquire property on the corners to properly align the intersection and make Wallace Avenue a straight route. There is also discussions around making Inkerman and Elma Streets one-ways to help offload traffic downtown.
Council is looking at a pilot project early next year to test some potential short term solutions. The pilot project would start with restricting all northbound traffic through the intersection.
“That south section of Wallace, between Main Street and Elma Street, would become one way southbound, so we would restrict all northbound traffic but we would also restrict the westbound left turn at that intersection," said Salvini.
This would mean drivers could only go straight down Wallace Avenue South toward Elma Street, with no one turning right or left onto Main Street Highway 86 coming from Wallace Avenue South heading northbound.
Salvini said the challenge would be finding the appropriate routing to get that traffic where they want to go.