If you drive Fairview Road south out of St. Thomas, the rural crossroads at John Wise Line may soon work differently. On September 22nd, Elgin County’s Committee of the Whole recommended turning it into an all-way stop, which would mean Fairview Road drivers stop there too. The committee also recommended lowering the speed limit on that part of Fairview Road from 80 km/h to 70 km/h.
The committee’s recommendations go to county council for final approval at a future meeting, and the county says the work will go ahead once its by-laws are amended. County council’s next meeting is Tuesday, October 13th. The whole package is estimated to cost $10,000. Neither the staff report nor the county’s summary of the meeting gives a date for the work.
The staff report behind the plan, from Director of Engineering Services Peter Dutchak, counts nine multi-vehicle collisions at the intersection since 2021. Five were reported to police in the past two years, and three happened in the past few months. Those crashes came from drivers either failing to stop at the stop sign or failing to yield to through traffic, the report says, and they have “typically been severe due to prevailing speeds through the intersection.” On August 20th, three vehicles collided there and ten people were hurt, five of them with life-threatening injuries, as LocVox reported at the time.
The corner already has a lot of warning built in. Drivers on John Wise Line face oversized stop signs and stop-ahead signs, rumble strips on both approaches, and an overhead beacon with lighting, while Fairview Road runs straight through. The report found the roads meet at a right angle with clear sightlines in every direction, and states that “no technical deficiencies exist.” When the county reviewed its highest-crash intersections from 2020 to 2024 for its Transportation Master Plan, this one was not singled out compared with other county intersections. The report points instead to the recent run of crashes.
What would change at the corner
All-way stops slow everyone down, so the report says they belong only where two roads carry similar amounts of traffic. The report puts Fairview Road at about 4,650 vehicles a day and John Wise Line at about 3,000, and says the intersection meets the Ontario Traffic Manual’s minimum volume and volume-split tests for an all-way stop. The goal is to cut down on high-speed, right-angle crashes and make the ones that do happen less severe, with fewer injuries.
Under the plan, every approach would get an oversized stop sign, plus a second stop sign on the left side of the road. That extra sign is there because an unusually high share of the crashes at this corner involved a driver failing to stop. The plan also adds oversized stop-ahead signs, rumble strips on every approach, new pavement markings and “all-way” tabs on the stop sign posts. The overhead beacon would be changed to show red in every direction, and temporary “NEW” signs would be added to the stop-ahead signs so drivers notice the change.
A slower stretch from the roundabout
The new 70 km/h zone would start at the south end of the Southdale Line roundabout, at the city’s southern edge, and run 2.05 kilometres south, past John Wise Line to about 500 metres beyond it. Staff say the lower limit gives drivers more time to make decisions, and acts as a step down from highway speed into the roundabout and the city. The county’s speed review found it could reasonably keep 80 km/h or drop to 70 km/h there, mainly because of the number of private driveways along the road. Staff chose the lower limit.
How it got here
Two delegations asked the county for changes here. In December 2025, resident Bernie Schuit brought a petition to county council asking for a safety review of the intersection. On August 11th, a second delegation asked council for a lower speed limit on Fairview Road for 700 metres south of Southdale Line. The staff plan goes further than that request, covering 2.05 kilometres.
Fairview Road and John Wise Line are both county roads, so county council makes the call. Central Elgin, where the intersection sits, would be asked to put up the new signs, with the county paying, and the county plans to announce the change on social media. Looking further ahead, the report says a traffic signal or a roundabout will be formally studied in the county’s next Transportation Master Plan, scheduled for 2030, as the area around the corner grows.
Until the new signs go up, nothing changes: John Wise Line traffic stops, and Fairview Road traffic does not.
Sources: Elgin County, staff report ENG 26-20, Fairview Road and John Wise Line Safety Enhancements, Elgin County, Fairview Road speed reduction map, Elgin County, “From the Council Chambers,” September 22, 2026
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
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