The Cavendish-Kildare Intersection

Traffic signals at the busy corner of Cavendish Boulevard and Kildare Road continue to represent a challenge for our engineering department. At the moment, at this particular intersection, the pedestrians at all corners are given a nine-second head- start (protected phase) before any vehicles waiting at the intersection are allowed to turn left or right onto either Cavendish or Kildare. After nine seconds, the pedestrians are halfway across the intersection and visible to the motorists, making it a safer situation than if vehicles and pedestrians were to start moving simultaneously, which would be the case if we removed the nine-second protected phase. Due to the programming capability of the controller we can either have protected left turns from Kildare onto Cavendish to go north or south, or the protected pedestrian phase. One is a safer option for motorists, the other for pedestrians, but unfortunately we cannot have both.

Our traffic committee has spent a lot of time examining this corner. We are looking at a possible redevelopment of the intersection , at which time a pedestrian refuge or overpass could be created in the middle of the street once we have widened Kildare at this location, as at present there is not enough space to create a pedestrian refuge. We would, however, still like to see some kind of pedestrian concrete or metal barrier on the centre median to increase pedestrians’ safety even in the meantime, though it is not possible due to space requirements.