ONE PIECE OF NEWS out of the last meeting Rather, it would involve some important statistics of Dufferin County Council was that the

outgoing councillors had voted to include $125,000 in the new council's 2007 budget to cover the expected cost of installing sophisticated traffic signals at the intersection of Dufferin 109 (formerly Highway 9) and Dufferin 25 (formerly Highway 25).

The move is the result of pressure from Grand Valley-area residents, relayed by East Luther Grand Valley Township Council, who suggested the signals would make it safer, as well as easier, to enter 109 from 25.

Recent traffic counts indicate that roughly 6,600 cars and trucks pass daily during business hours on 109 and just up to 180 vehicles an hour enter 109 from 25.

Although Trevor Lewis, the county's public works director, acknowledges that a three-way stop at the intersection would make it a lot easier for the southbound traffic to pull on to the busy highway, he says such an installation wouldn't be attractive in terms of engineering parameters. (The complaint would be that the mandatory stops would needlessly tie up traffic.)

In the circumstances, it will be interesting to see whether the new county council that takes office next month will rubber-stamp inclusion of the signal installation in next year's budget.

We would be pleased to see the new council put the proposal to a proper test and establish a longterm policy for signal installations.

Such a policy would be based on a lot more than periodic traffic counts and pressure from local residents.

beyond the traffic counts, such as the average speeds being driven on the through road, the visibility or lack thereof and, most importantly, the number and severity of crashes in recent years.

One might think that such studies had always been involved before the county approved such costly installations. That belief would find support in the fact the county did install signals at the crashprone junction of County Road 3 (the Orangeville- Fergus highway) and County 24 (formerly Highway 25).

However, we would offer the 109-25 proposal and the differential treatment of two intersections on County 18 (Airport Road) as evidence that political pressure, rather than safety, has too often been the primary catalyst.

If one were to weigh the relative merits of signals at the Grand Valley corner, Mansfield and the junction of Hockley and Airport Roads (County 7 and 18), one would surely give top marks to the latter intersection.

As most readers are already painfully aware, the Hockley-Airport junction is far too often the scene of serious crashes, many of which have involved fatalities. There may have been a few at the 109-25 corner, but any serious crashes would be rendered highly unlikely if it were made a three-way stop. As for the Mansfield intersection, it's in a reducedspeed zone with relatively little east-west traffic and no history of bad crashes.

Yet the sad fact of the matter is that Mansfield got the signals first, Grand Valley is next in line and the "Hockley horror" junction seemingly isn't even on the drawing board.