Dear editor:

Participatory democracy at its finest! Niagara Region is now asking NOTL residents to help choose between two designs for a roundabout in St. Davids (“Future St. Davids roundabout narrowed down to two options, region asks residents to vote for one,” May 1) when all evidence suggests that most locals don’t want the project to go ahead at all.

Both of the proposed designs are ridiculous. The principal design criterion for a roundabout must be that it should enhance traffic safety.

These two designs, festooned with kitschy representations of local history or agriculture, will surely have exactly the opposite effect, distracting drivers from the need to focus on their driving.

And how many people passing through the intersection will either know or care what the decorative features are supposed to represent?

Much money has already been spent on this project, and all the while, NOTL council has thrown up its hands, saying it’s the region’s project and the region is bound and determined to go ahead with it.

Interesting, then, to read in the full-page ad in last week’s Lake Report that “the council of the Town of Niagara on the Lake is the approval authority for all landscaping and streetscaping upgrades to the roundabout.”

So NOTL council does have a say here — and what it should say, very loudly, is NO.

James Webber
Virgil