Sylvia Mosher, we suspect, may never be invited to appear on radio talk shows.
It takes considerable patience to understand even the simplest phrases spoken by the Northern Avenue resident.
But sit Sylvia at a computer and she's transformed into an articulate communicator and a passionate advocate for the disabled.
Mosher is the disability columnist for the Sault Star.
She's one of a dozen disabled individuals who live in the Knights of Columbus Housing Complex beside Pee Wee Arena.
This month, Mosher wrote an eloquent plea to the City of Sault Ste. Marie, asking it to reconsider its 1998 refusal to put a crosswalk or a traffic light on Northern Avenue near the Zellers plaza on Great Northern Road.
Begged and pleaded
"In the ten years that I have been here, we have tried to get a crosswalk with a pedestrian light," Mosher wrote.
"We have begged and pleaded with City Council but to no avail."
"Why do they always have to wait until something bad happens before they pay attention?"
The City's response
Jim Elliot, the City's deputy commissioner for public works and transportation, responded to Mosher with a letter that essentially parrotted the position taken in 1998 by the man who held his job then, Patrick McAuley. Interestingly, McAuley is now Elliot's boss.
Elliot's recommendation, to do nothing, went to City Council as part of Monday night's consent agenda.
That means it was one of 29 items set to be rubber-stamped, without debate, in a single vote.
Only Amaroso spoke up
Of the 13 individuals who sit on City Council, only Ward 5 Councillor Debbie Amaroso said a word about the issue.
She asked whether anything else could be done for residents of the Knights of Columbus Housing Complex.
Maybe they could be bussed to the plaza across the street, she was told.
And with little more than a minute's discussion, Council voted to do absolutely nothing.
International Safe Community
Interestingly, with the same vote councillors used to maintain the status quo on Northern Avenue, they approved another resolution stating that "injury prevention within the community is a social responsibility of the community."
In the selfsame breath, Council added that "any injury is unacceptable" and declared its wish to pursue an International Safe Community designation for the Sault from the World Health Organization (WHO).
If we can convince the WHO that we're serious about safety, councillors were told, we'll become one of just five designated communities in Canada and 60 in the world.
As a result, jobs and tourists will flow into the Sault, Council learned.
Daily necessities
Back in the very real world of Northern Avenue, Sylvia Mosher and others in her housing complex depend on the plaza across the street for daily necessities.
Zellers is there. So is a food store. There's a restaurant, a hairdresser, a bank, a dry cleaner and a number of small shops.
"Crossing the street is dangerous all the time and could even be deadly at times," she says. "Each year the traffic gets faster and heavier."
The plaza, located adjacent to Alexander Henry High School, is almost directly across Northern Avenue from the Knights of Columbus Complex.
Nearest stop light at Great Northern Road
The City wants Mosher and other March of Dimes clients in her building to travel several hundred yards up the street to the nearest traffic light at Great Northern Road.
"This means that everyone should be going up to the corner and backtracking, which is annoying but doable for people in electric wheelchairs when the sidewalk isn't full of slush and snow," she says.
"Imagine, though, how difficult it is for the elderly, or people pushing themsleves in manual wheelchairs, or mothers pushing strollers in any kind of weather."
Crossing at the light is nerve-racking in its own right, Mosher says, because "the road is wide with a right-turning lane and then an island."
The City's side of the story
At the City Works Centre on Sackville Road, Jim Elliot explains that the Northern Avenue situation has been reviewed by the City numerous times over the past 14 years.
"City staff sympathizes with the problems associated with disabled people who use wheelchairs and the fact that they have difficulty dealing with vehicular traffic when crossing any street within the City," Elliot says.
Municipalities, he explains, use criteria known as 'warrants' to decide where to place traffic signals or other devices. To ensure uniformity across the province, warrants are based on guidelines established by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
240 pedestrians an hour needed for crossover
"This area of Northern Avenue is still below the 240 persons per hour for an eight-hour period and does not establish a warrant for a pedestrian crossover."
Elliot argues that warrants actually protect pedestrians.
"History has shown that where a warrant was not justified and pedestrians did not consistently use a crossing, drivers started to disregard the crossing," he says.
Is the situation really dangerous?
"In the last 10 years, one pedestrian accident occurred in this area in November of 2001 as a result of crossing the street. The accident involved a 14-year-old girl who was crossing Northern Avenue to Alexander Henry High School.
"In this case, the warrant would exist if there were three accidents per year for a five-year period," Elliot says.
Great Northern gridlock
Elliot also points out another wrinkle.
"The east approach to the Great Northern Road intersection is over capacity and until such time as the intersection is widened, traffic will continue to back up and a pedestrian crossing would play havoc with traffic."
Elliot therefore opposes a pedestrian crossover on Northern Avenue, but his report to Council leaves open the door for a privately funded set of stand-alone traffic lights.
If the Columbus Club Housing Corp. and City Council agree such an installation is appropriate, then the Columbus Club should come up with the cost, he says.
The cost would be $71,000.
We do news differently
SooToday.com is completely independent from the Sault Star, Sault This Week and all other news media. We're Sault-owned and an overwhelming majority of our thousands of readers consider us their favourite source for local news. If you appreciate our unique approach to community journalism, why not make us your home page? Just click here.