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A Vancouver effort to make pedestrians safer is thinking outside the crosswalk box

May 28th, 2012 · 118 Comments

Chicago is setting a new goal of trying to achieve zero traffic fatalities, the most ambitious of any North American city. But, as this story notes, that’s easier said than done.

Back here in Vancouver, no one has set a zero-fatality target but the city’s engineering department, with the help of UBC’s pioneering traffic-management research, is trying to figure out the most effective ways of preventing pedestrian-car collisions. As it turns out, some things you would think might work don’t (flashing yellows, speed-indicator boards, signs advertising pedestrian crossings), while others, no more expensive, do.

My story in the Globe takes a look at some of the science behind the city’s recent report on improving pedestrian safety.

Tangentially, the conflict-analysis technique that UBC prof Tarek Sayed refers to in this story was used to analyze why the number of car-bike crashes rose at Pacific and Burrard after the separated bike lanes were introduced. Turned out that it was because cars, in spite of signs telling them they couldn’t, were still trying to turn right from Burrard onto Pacific. The city is making an adjustment to that corner to make it much harder for a car to turn right, which should bring the crash rate back down.

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  • Silly Season

    @Frank Ducote

    I don’t know if this is just cocky hubris–or true pathology.

    But prepare to have a heavy heart, anyway:

  • Bill Lee

    @Norman // Jun 1, 2012 at 8:08 am #87

    I agree. The slowing traffic campaign on Hastings street, either side of Main appears to be stopped.

    The Police never liked it, opposed it publicly and now most cars go over 50 k through that section, though it only takes one slow car ahead to slow down the rest.
    And I noticed last night that, again, the electronic speed sign display for those going west on Hastings, high on a Gore St. light pole no longer works.

    Have there been knockdowns on that part of Hastings and the press never reported it? What does ICBC or the Police records say?

  • brilliant

    @Richard 84-So you’re in favour of slowing cyclists down to 30 km/h as well?

  • Richard

    @brilliant

    There is overwhelming evidence that motor vehicle speeds 30kph and over are deadly for pedestrians and cyclists. I’m not sure at what speed cycling becomes really dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. That said, until there is evidence that cycling at over 30kph, it is probably reasonable that cyclists stick to 30kph or lower to error on the safe side.

    Anyway, if the road is signed 30kph, that applies to cyclists as well as motorists and I am fine with that. I would say it is probably better to focus enforcement on motorist as due to the much heavier weight of the motor vehicles, a speeding motorist will do much more damage to other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.

    So in summary, yes.

  • Chris Keam

    “what are the other causative or contributing factors to the kind of incivility you/we are noting?”

    Our society has been awash in violence as entertainment and self-absorbed consumer branding as self-expression for more than a generation — creating whole segments of society desensitized to suffering and the needs of others.

    The primacy of the individual trumps all. Many of us have grown up with the spectre of global annihilation hovering over our shoulders as politicians send children to their deaths over and over again, while barely able to manage their own personal or public affairs with anything resembling decency or integrity. You couldn’t come up with a better recipe for breeding nihilism and disrespect for anyone beyond one’s own clique. What we see now is not an aberration . When it comes to the loss of civility we’re all experiencing, in our world — with the values we are teaching… it’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

  • IanS

    @Frank Ducote #82:

    IMO, drivers in Vancouver are getting worse and driving in Vancouver is getting worse. Over the last few years, it appears to me that traffic in Vancouver has become increasingly congested. I don’t drive often, but when I do, I find driving in Vancouver to be a very frustrating experience. I expect that frustration to be a contributing factor. Not an excuse, of course, but a reason.

    I should note also that this lack of respect for others isn’t limited to drivers, in my experience. I see the same thing in both cyclists and pedestrians.

  • jenables

    IanS, why don’t you ask the *coughcoughsustainabilitycouncil* about that? I have heard that was part of the plan to reduce vehicular traffic. Make driving so annoying that you are harassed into other methods. your tax dollars at work?

  • Silly Season

    @Chris Keam #105

    Yes, absolutely.

    I would also suggest that “community” values are not taught by osmosis, but rather by 1) example 2) discusion about what community standards are (and how we define them).

    There are obviously things out there in the greater society that have helped get us to this sad place, as Chris points out.

    But I like to think that those of us who remember a time when acting decently towards our fellows and volunteerism was the norm, can set the example again.

    We have a selfish, self absorbed and unhappy society right now. I think the terms are not mutually exclusive.

    And I’m not sure that “more money” will solve all our problems in this area. But more human and humane contact might.

    Giving of large sums of money to instituitions and charities is all well and good. But it doesn’t really show a personal contribution in the way of time, forming inter-realtionships or contributing—and without demanding something tangible back.

  • Frank Ducote

    Friends, esp. SS, CK, jenables and IanS – this is a very troubling thread. After all, trying to build a sense of community, identity and neighbourliness, i,e., belonging, is a core value of governance, city planning and, I would say, civics in general (is that still taught in schools??).

    If, after decades of concentrated effort we are achieving less rather than more civility and common courtesy, it leaves one with a real sense of loss and frustration and even less hope.

    On a more mundane front, the profile of ADT in Vancouver has changed dramatically over the past two decades or so. It used to have two sharp and pronounced peaks during the am and pm “rush” periods. Certainly a quaint and ironic term, that!
    Now, it is higher thru all hours of the day, well into the evening. Weekends offer little respite.

    So, I agree that there is more vehicular congestion all the time,to which we’re adding significantly more “active transportation” choices. Which, ergo, increases the kinds of conflicts we’re all – and I do mean all – experiencing.

    What to do about it in the noble quest for safety and harmony is the challenge.

  • A Dave

    @ Richard

    “This should be pretty much required reading on the lobbying and social engineering by the automobile lobby to change public thought and laws to facilitate the use of automobiles at dangerous speeds in cities.”

    I couldn’t agree more, Richard. Unfortunately, Vancouver has bike lobbyists like Richard Campbell (I assume, by your comments above, is not you) who recently advocated on behalf of the Powell St. connector, a car-centric freeway-style project costing $25 million dollars.

    This project will increase what are already exceedingly high traffic volumes and speeds for the residential neighbourhoods downstream (the Powell – Cordova coupling that races through the DTES). Road conditions and traffic volumes in the Japantown-Oppenheimer area are already hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, social functioning, investment, and walkability, and will only get worse when this project is completed.

    On top of this, the project will involve the expropriation and demolition of city blocks (causing massive GHG emissions), destroy the last prominent heritage structure in the area, and tear up asphalt and infrastructure to move the street 20 feet south!

    So it’s really disappointing that people who claim to champion sustainability and bike/pedestrian safety are only too happy to appear before planning committees to support this car-centric, expensive, and massively destructive freeway-style project.

    One step forward, two steps back…

  • Richard

    @A Dave

    Please don’t misrepresent my position. I am only lobbying for a better bicycle path on the facility. I have suggested that they only make the overpass two or three lanes for motor vehicles. I have also recommended they reallocation 1 or 2 lanes of traffic on Powell Street for a bike path on the north side.

    I have never “advocated on behalf of the Powell St. connector”

    I expect a complete retraction of your last comment.

  • IanS

    @Frank Ducote #109,

    I don’t think there’s any real cause for despair here. Both the nature of this exchange (ie. discussing problems) and the medium of this exchange (an internet message board, where mountains are made of molehills and the tiniest of problems are magnified beyond belief) makes it seem a lot worse than it really is. IMO, anyway.

    As someone (Chris Keam, I think) pointed out earlier (and to paraphrase), for every aggressive, inconsiderate or inattentive driver / cyclist / pedestrian, there are plenty more who are none of that.

  • A Dave

    “Richard Campbell, president of the B.C. Cycling Coalition, supports the overpass project…”

    Maybe you should ask The Courier for a retraction first, Richard.

  • Silly Season

    I was looking up some other info and came upon this story on a study re: bikes, red lights and intersections:

    http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/12/uncomfortable-relationship-between-bikes-and-red-lights/623/

    Happy reading!

  • Bill Lee

    @A Dave // Jun 2, 2012 at 3:43 pm #110

    And it further alienates the access to the water.

    So False Creek is good water because it has condos and an embankment to retain the pristine water views, while Powell street is fenced off from the water and brings hazardous cargos to be transported by trains and busy trucks to our East Side streets?

    Hello. Shut the port down and give us back our port and land.
    This is why The Cannery closed, the Campbell Avenue fisherman’s wharf and the lovely Marine View Cafe closed.

    Give us back our water front. We’ll sic Bob Rennie and his friend Darth Wall on you because they want ocean front condos on brownfield sites in the DTES.

  • A Dave

    Bill, I travelled the Powell/Cordova coupling 3-4 times a week (2x a day) for six years straight and could count on one hand the number of times I had to wait for a train to cross. A hell of a lot of destruction and $$ is going into solving a “problem” that really doesn’t exist… only to create more problems in the DTES.

    I suspect this new viaduct is really being built in anticipation of the OTHER viaducts coming down — a vain attempt to mitigate the traffic nightmare that will ensue…

  • A Dave

    “We’ll sic Bob Rennie and his friend Darth Wall on you because they want ocean front condos on brownfield sites in the DTES.”

    And Bill, didn’t you hear? Rennie has already marketed the most desirable piece of waterfront in North America. According to his “System”, there is no downtown waterfront left to develop anywhere, ever…

  • Bill Lee

    Yes, I have noticed the few daytime railroad/railway crossings.

    It is usually at night and mainly returning empty cars to the Prairies and the Coquitlam yards for the CN, to the great enterainment of people at the Mondo Gelato store on Venables next to the tracks.

    CPR (“God damn the CPR” as the Prairie lass Frances Bula knows well) has the waterfront and other companies pay rent when they travel on its tracks.
    This is why one of the shorter railways in Canada, the 0.6 km UGG (United Grain Growers) grain terminal shunting engine never goes past a certain mark on the tracks from the grain terminal dock.
    In the old days before these insane American Homeland Insecurity inspired closures of OUR waterfront, you would see this.
    There is a wonderful old CBC black and white film of a drive from Stanley Park to Burnbaby along the port roads closest to the docks.