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Page 2, Thursday, February 3rd, 1972, WHITE3Y FREE PRESS NOT GUILTY There are sincere and well-meaning members represented on Town of Whi tby Council, and there are - in our opinion - i n s i ncere members as wel1, and the former, according to one councillor " t o ok the brunt of the last two editor- ia 1 s published in the WHITBY FREE PRESS. " "Bo y are you on the hot seat, "his con tituents deride him. 1} h a t would you do if you were in my lace at council ?" he asks. His question is one that deserves some thought. It i s sometimes t o o easy to make a "whipping boy "of the body that governs our municipal affairs. With the present economic situation, we are perhaps a I i t tle touchy these days on the subject of our tax dollars. Two w e ek s a go t he "Whitby Free Pr e ss" t ook a strong editorial stand be cause of a general lack of council a t t e n dance at a function held to raise funds for Whitby storm victims. Three councillors contacted offered v a i d reason for their absence. Oddly enough, it is the opinion of this news- paper that these three incontrovertibly h a v e the best in teres t of this town at heart. B u t t h i s is only our opinion. This opinion was formed by attending m e e t - i ng s of council which are open to the public as well as the media on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of the nionth, 8 p. m. A sincere thank you to the overwhel- ming support received from our readers on our previous editorials. The comments to be read in our ed- A ~ itorial smay compliment council when it proachwhen it is felt a deed to be other- wise. is our opinion that a deed has been wel I ... Such is the mainstay of newspap- d o n e , or m a y on the other hand, re- ers. -kl'ýt fi-1 FROM A BIRD 'S EYE VIEW JIM OUAIL WerN That's just what this town needs. A February clearance on stop signs. After ail we certainly have more than enough of them to sel1. Take quiet little Arthur Street for example. Why it's only four blocks long from start tofinish and right in the middle of it you'll find a three- way stop. The south side of this inter- section only goes for a block and a half south till it meets the 401 but I guess the traffic is so bad in the area we have ail those stop siqns. It's Arthur Street And of course you remember little Arthur street don't you? The name may not seem familI1iar because it has changed names somany times, but there it is . .. aone way street going east from Henry to Brock. Mr. Wilde of Henry street wants toknow why it's one-way. Shame on you Mr. Wilde! You shouldn't ques- tion the decisions of the Town Fathers and the traffic expert they hired a few years ago. After ail, they're educated and we're just lowly residents. Itwouldbe easy to see by helicopter that traffic flows in circles in this area. Of course that is caused by people trying tocircumvent the one way street called ... um... don't prompt me .. Arthur, that's it! ... to get to their homes. If the planning of all this traffic con- troI seems like a game to you I think you're r ight. It looks like the Town made agood buy on some one-way signs and some stop signs and so they had to put them to good use right away. For some strange reason though the Town seems reluctant to replace the Ieed A Clearance Sale On Stop Signs s t op s ign on the north corner of Kent a n d W a 1 n u t Streets. It's so faded it do es n 1 t even glow, and it is mounted about three feet too high for headlights unless you're driving an earth mover. Bus stop I often wonder if it was our traffic- experts who placed the bus stop right in front of the "Dairy Bar". Whether it's a b u s or a t r u ck stopped to unload at t h e "D airy Bar" you can't see a darn thing coming from the west when you try t o pull out of Byron Street South. But t h e n m a y be t h e traffic experts were walking and didn't have that vision pro- blem. I have often suspected the theory of the traffic experts is that if you can s t i ck something on the public long en- ough they'll eventually get used to it.. like driving in circles. But the experts change their minds. We had proof of that on Brock South at the 40l. For years the police would wait to c a t c h y ou turning left onto the 401 cloverleaf east-bound. And they caught agoodmany people. The theory seemed to be that y o u couldn't c u t across ail1 the murderous traffic that came up from Po r t Whitby. Better y ou should turn right and take the long scenic clover- leaf around theold railroad station with a g I i m pse of the snowplows. And then along came the GO train, and suddenly i t was all right t o turn left across all1 that murderous traffic. In fact you.hadl no choice because the other cloverleaf, theoneyou were originally supposed to use, was closed to traffic. There r e a I ly is no figuring out the t r a f f i c e x p erts. We have stop signs coming out of our ears, but the no-left t ur n at t he four corners is so small many times the tourists miss it and, horrors!, holdup traffic trying to make an illegal left turn. Surely, Town Fath- ers if we must have no-left turns at the four corners, we can afford a bigger sign. Why can't we melt a couple of stop signs ? Traffic lights T h e t r a f f ic lights are the biggest farce of ail. Our traffic is so bad, the lights have to function ail night. Now I can understand the lights at the four corners functioning normally ail night, but really, doweneed them at Anderson and Dundas or at Annes and Dundas all night ? If we sold some of the stop signs a t t h e four-way stop at Cochrane and Walnut, we might be able to afford a timer so the lights would blink red one way and yellow another way after mid- night. How to be a traffic expert My suggestions are from my opinions as adriver only. I would never suggest to the Town Fathers that I know as much about traff ic as do their experts. I h e a rd that to be an expert you have to s e r ve a t e n - y e a r apprenticeship in Lithuania just studying traffic and it's eff ects on the population. l'm such a poor driver I could never be a traffic expert. Besides, I'mnotsurewhichcut- off you take for Lithuania anyway!