The name of St. Patrick’s Road was used for decades on the sign at Rte 2 just west of Hunter River, but four years ago they changed it to Rte 239. As it ends up the province had made a mistake because further down on Rte 239 is another section called “St. Patrick’s Road” and there were duplicate civic numbers – so they had to change the sign to help safety personnel like volunteer firefighters, etc.
However, the local residents still refer to the road as St. Patrick’s Road, and there is all kinds of confusion when giving directions, getting packages delivered by UPS, etc.
Digging deeper the PEI government verified that this is a bigger problem – there are several roads in the area that are improperly labelled – and they are endeavouring to fix this. But, of course it means a big impact to locals if their roads are renamed.
For Rte 239 in particular people are advocating just changing the name to “St. Patrick’s South” from Rte 2 through to the junction at New Orleans Road – and then no civic numbers would have to change.
Resolution
A petition for the change back to St. Patrick’s Road was presented in 2014. After four years of persistence in contacting the Department of Transportation the following response was give on March 10, 2016. Three options were given:
- Status Quo, the road name remains as Rte 239 and civic numbers remain the same.
- Come up with a new distinct name (that does not include “St Patricks” in it, lower or south St Patricks is unacceptable) but it would still remain as Rte 239.
- Change the Route # from 239 to 266 and then it can be known as St. Patricks Rd – Rte 266 BUT every number civic number will need to change and this option will also require an Executive Council Memo to change the Rte number.
The community is being contacted to determine which option they want to proceed with.
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