By Chad Ingram

Published July 18 2017

Pedestrians crossing Highland Street at the sometimes busy intersection of York Street and Cedar Avenue in Haliburton Village will continue to do so without a crosswalk.

The council for Dysart et al had initially passed a resolution to include the project in the municipality’s 2016 budget.

The decision was made following a traffic study done by Tranplan Associates which concluded there was enough traffic to warrant a courtesy pedestrian crosswalk.

However councillors seemed to reconsider the move at a later meeting and Dysart et al chief administrative officer Tamara Wilbee has confirmed the project is not on the municipality’s list of budgeted projects for 2017.

“Last year there were some changes to traffic rules around crosswalks and crossovers that caused council to pause to rethink” Wilbee wrote in an email to the paper. “Basically it looks like any ‘crossovers’ need to be lighted overhead and cars and bikes have to stop while pedestrians cross the entire road not just half of the road as they had previously.”

That change was part of the province’s Making Ontario Roads Safer Act.

Some provinces such as B.C. and Manitoba have laws dictating that motorists must only yield half the road to pedestrians while others have laws dictating the entire roadway must be yielded.