It’s almost six years since the median was built on Broadway, but it continues to be a subject of controversy.

To its many detractors, the median is a colossal waste of money, a traffic inconvenience and a safety hazard. But to its supporters, it’s symbolic of the proactive thinking and commitment needed to maintain the prosperity of Orangeville’s downtown core.

“Environmentally, (the median) has made downtown a more welcoming place,” contends Broadway jeweler Paul Korsten. “Visitors from outside Orangeville comment, what a lovely downtown we have, and say ‘I wish our town could do something like this.’

“Is it perfect? Nothing’s perfect. But whatever problems there are, they are just minor stuff.”

Strongly promoted by former mayor Drew Brown while he was in office, the median was built in 2006 at a cost of $650,000, the entire amount coming from private sources.

Municipal money is spent to maintain it, however. The town public works department estimates it spends, on average, $20,000 a year on the structure. That figure constitutes about .13 per cent of the public works budget of about $16 million.

“Thanks to that thing, there is no more Broadway,” notes one critic. “It’s a narrow way.”

One argument is that the median’s presence tends to slow traffic in the downtown.

“For local residents, it is about how well somebody travels in their car,” says Gordon Shawcross, co-proprietor of Aardvark Music and Culture on Broadway. “But downtown is not about traveling. It’s about maintaining a uniqueness.”

As far as cars are concerned, there is a widely held contention that parking spaces were sacrificed to make way for its construction. For example, Broadway once had angle parking.

But Janice Gooding, Broadway merchant and former Orangeville councillor, points out that other factors led to the demise of angle parking.

She says the need for turning lanes on Broadway made angle parking no longer feasible years before the median was proposed. As well, Ms. Gooding says angle parking led to too many accidents.

She also contended that the switch to parallel parking did not cause a significant reduction in parking spaces.

The Liberal provincial government in the 1980s was pressuring the town to change to parallel parking and allow four lanes for the heavy traffic, when Broadway was also part of Highway 9.

Ms. Gooding said that with all the heavy truck traffic,

“the strength of the downtown would have been lost.”

Merchant Christine Korsten is grateful that construction of the County 109 bypass led to a ban on heavy trucks using Broadway. “Gravel used to bounce off the trucks and right into the store,” she recalls.

There have also been consistent rumours that the median was built in spite of protests from the fire department, which supposedly opposed the project.

But Fire Chief Andy Macintosh, who participated in the initial discussions about the median, says his department was not opposed to the project. “I said it would make our job more difficult, but certainly not impossible.”

He also believes that, if the department had strongly objected, the median would never have been built.

As for fighting fires on Broadway, Chief Macintosh said certain measures would need to be taken, such as “short jacking” stabilizers that prop up the ladders.

This entails deploying them at half their full extension, which the chief maintains is “still both effective and safe.”

Although the mobility of fire hoses could be compromised by a lack of space, Chief Macintosh says hosing down a building is a final fire-fighting step, essentially intended to protect neighbouring buildings.

He said crews fight the fires from within the structure “for at least a half hour” before resorting to hoses, and this exercise is not compromised by the median.