It took numerous calls and some arm twisting by the Councillor, but the City is now conducting traffic counts on Preston, Bronson, and Albert.  The unique value of these is to count cars while Booth Street south of Albert is closed due to construction. The City always says it cannot close Booth south of Albert to through traffic because, like dammed water, it would flow around and flood the adjacent streets with cars. And push those streets to the breaking point, resulting in traffic chaos.

To anyone who bothers to go out on the streets at rush hour (and that is all we are talking about, since the streets have excess capacity for 20+ hours of the day) they will see slightly longer line ups, sometimes, on Preston or Bronson. The traffic snarl at Albert is mostly due to the lights be set up as if Booth was open; if retimed the intersection should be able to handle the same volume of traffic with or without the Booth lanes south of Albert.

It will be interesting to see the data, and the conclusions our traffic engineers draw from it.