North Perth Council will soon decide whether to maintain a one way street on Wallace Avenue off Main Street at the central intersection in Listowel.
A traffic experiment has been in place since the summer, with the goal of reducing wait times at the lights at Wallace and Main, North Perth CAO Kris Snell says the final report on the project came back and showed significantly reduced queue times at the lights.
"Now having said that, certainly we heard from a lot of people from the south part of the Listowel ward that are travelling North. It certainly does impact their ability to move north through the Listowel ward."
Snell says council has requested staff to look at some of the recommendations from the report regarding pedestrian movement in the intersection, as well as how to improve traffic flow from the south to the north.
"That may not be possible but it's certainly something we have to take a look at. For example, maybe looking at banning left hand turns from certain streets onto Main Street, just so the traffic doesn't become queued on some of those other intersections coming onto Main Street."
That report from staff will come back to council on November 1st. Snell adds that a couple recommendations came out of the final report, including keeping the four way stop at Wallace and Alma Street even if Wallace is returned to a two way street there.
"As well as reinstatement of some of the Main Street parking, so in the mean time we are actually putting three of the parking streets back on the east side of Wallace on Main Street on the south side."
For now, the intersection will remain as-is, and on November 1st when council receives the requested staff report, a decision on what happens at the intersection will be made.
"Council will ultimately have to decide whether to maintain the one way street at Wallace, or go back to the old four way directional street and with that probably comes the queuing problems in our downtown core again."