Lanark Era
July 16, 2002

Highlands’ Consultant Says:

OMYA Still Missing the Mark
With its Transportation Study

By Peter Wand

OMYA’s second transportation study is more comprehensive than the first, but there are still a few kinks in the plan as far as Lanark Highlands council is concerned.

Councillors learned Tuesday (July 9) the new two-part plan - consisting of a transportation review and noise/vibration impact study - has been appraised by the township’s consulting engineer and found wanting.

Council agreed to add comments from the township’s planning consultant and then forward the document to Dillon Consulting Engineers, the firm that prepared the transportation review on behalf of OMYA (Canada) Inc.

All of the costs of the transportation review - including the township’s costs for its own consultant’s services - are borne by OMYA as part of the company’s application for zoning changes for the Tatlock quarry.

In his analysis, the township’s consultant, Steve Taylor of National Capital Engineering, said the transportation review should have included a 24 hour profile of truck movements through a typical day and historic truck-traffic volumes.

He also said the report needed specific information about the marble trucks such as their turning radius, size, exhaust emissions, vibration and dust characteristics.

Mr. Taylor noted the report did not complete the quality-of-life parameters dealing with compliance with traffic rules and a survey to determine the extent of illegal passing of trucks by impatient motorists.

The potential for using County Roads 16 and 9 as an alternate route from the Tatlock quarry to Pearth means these roads need to be included in the analysis, the engineer said.

This, he said in reviewing the noise and vibration part of the report, might also be the key to removing any noise and vibration impact from the more populated areas along the (county road) 511 corridor.

As well, the impact of increased heavy-vehicle traffic on the pavement of County Rd. 511 needed consideration. Mr. Taylor proposed a geotechnical assessment of 511's capacity to accept additional truck traffic.

Specifically, the engineer wants the review to consider the effects of acceleration, stop-and-go traffic and truck operations in Lanark Village, particularly at the Scotiabank turn.

In considering the impact of noise, Mr. Taylor suggested the model should consider the increase in traffic noise from 2002 levels, but also the increase in noise from a baseline without quarry traffic at all.

As for the ‘design day’, he said it should include “a peaking factor above the average trucking day” and “a worse case condition where the peak site (quarry) traffic is occurring in the quietest period of the day.”

To mitigate “the detrimental effects of site-generated traffic,” he suggested alternatives including such things as time and load restrictions and diverting part of the traffic to a new route on County Rds. 9 and 16.

Another alternative, he said, would be a bypass around Lanark Village to handle truck traffic.