ONE THING ONTARIO’S Ministry of Transportation (MTO) cannot be accused of is consistency.

On the one hand, the ministry finally, after nearly a decade of campaigning by Mono Council, acknowledged the need to provide a safe turning lane on Highway 10 at its junction with Mono’s 10 Sideroad and Dufferin Road 10, construction of which was accomplished this summer in record time.

The result is a five-lane highway at the intersection with greatly improved safety for turning traffic, and the same standard at the Hockley Road (5 Sideroad) and Camilla (15 Sideroad) intersections. And with the recent widening of Highway 10 south of Orangeville, a five-lane standard is in place through to the connection with Highway 410.

But it’s a vastly different story north of Camilla, where the highway remains at the same two-lane standard adopted in the 1920s when the road was paved with concrete.

Instead of the five-lane standard south of Orangeville and the four lanes plus turning lanes at the intersections between Orangeville and Camilla, there is no turning lane at the junctions with 20, 25 and 30 Sideroads.

The importance of turning lanes at such intersections was underscored last Saturday when the lack of one at 30 Sideroad led to a serious personal-injury accident.

The woefully inadequate signalized Primrose intersection having caused a milelong backup of northbound traffic, a car attempting to cross the highway was broadsided by a southbound car which the poor woman driver couldn’t see, for lack of the visibility a left-turn lane would have provided. Her husband was badly injured and she faces a charge of failing to yield, in a circumstance where the MTO ought to be found criminally negligent.

In the circumstances, we hope Dufferin County Council, Mono Council and MPP Sylvia Jones will join in demanding the Province immediately fix the three intersections and commit to widening of the highway between Camilla and Primrose within five years, along with provision of the longsought Shelburne bypass.