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Curt Martin has had enough.
As he stands outside his home on a stretch of Highway 24 just before McQueen Shaver Boulevard, he has to raise his voice to get his point across.
Not just because he's angry, which is evident, but due to the noise from the non-stop traffic whipping by at speeds in excess of 80 km/h.
"It's constant," Martin said.
"If we don't hear a car or a truck for more than three minutes people are coming out to see where the accident is. We can't open our windows anymore."
Having lived in his house for 31 years and with his young granddaughter living next door, Martin doesn't know how much more he can take.
The excessive speeding, unneeded passing on the road and noise has created a safety issue for those who live in the area.
He recalls one morning walking out into his front yard to plastic shards and an antifreeze stain on his lawn. A car the previous night flew into a snow bank, went airborne and had to be towed away.
Another time while cutting his grass, he was almost hit by a speeding truck.
And then there's the tree in his front yard that's been reduced to a shrub because it was taken out by a motorist.
This is all without mentioning school buses make frequent stops along the stretch multiple times per day.
It's an issue that's been exacerbated over the past three or four years, Martin said. He believes population growth is the main cause and with Cambridge in the process of building 19,000 new homes by 2031, he fears its only going to get worse.
"Before we had the busy times in the morning and afternoon," he said.
"Now there's traffic like this 22 hours a day."
Martin has hundreds of pages of documentation of correspondence with the Township of North Dumfries, the City of Cambridge, the Region of Waterloo and the Ministry of Transportation but it's yielded little in the way of action.
He was told that the issue would be addressed but it would have to wait until the roundabout and McQueen Shaver Boulevard was built to see how it impacted traffic in either direction.
Well, that made the issue worse, Martin said.
"We used to at least get a break southbound because of the Myers road traffic lights," he said.
"Now the few cars that do come down McQueen Shaver fill in that gap and Myers now has a sensor light. Everything funnels to this road."
Martin has ideas for short and long term solutions that he's presented to delegates, including during an in-person meeting with Cambridge MPP Brian Riddell.
The first is dropping the speed limit to 50 km from the currently posted 60, something he was told would take up to a year due to amendments that would need to be made within the Highway Traffic Act. He'd also like to see the limiting of passing and better enforcement.
The second is far more complex and involves re-routing 2.7 km of new road to the east of where highway 24 is now. It would run through undeveloped land and meet on McQueen Shaver, where another roundabout could also help mitigate the speeding issues there.
Martin understands the scope of the work is no easy undertaking but believes something has to be done to make the area more residential with so many houses lining the stretch of highway. He said he has support from the many neighbours he's spoken to.
When reached for comment, the City of Cambridge said it had received complaints but with it being a regional road all questions needed to be directed to the region.
In a followup to the region, when asked if they had received complaints and if there was discussion around potential solutions, they said Waterloo Regional Police would be the best contact for information on such complaints.
The Township of North Dumfries didn't respond in time for publication.
"If something isn't done, these houses will become uninhabitable," Martin said.
"The kids on this road get off the school bus and can't go across the street to play with their neighbours."
