Mayor Patrick Johnstone wants the city to find short-term and long-term fixes to a stretch of roadway where a pedestrian was killed on Sunday afternoon.
Members of the New Westminster Police Department attended the 100 block of East Columbia Street about 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 19, after receiving a report that a pedestrian had been struck by the driver of a semi-truck. The NWPD is in the early stages of investigating the fatal pedestrian motor vehicle incident.
In response to the death, some community members have been calling for improved safety measures near East Columbia and Debeck Street, which is the area just after the light when westbound vehicles turn from Brunette Avenue onto East Columbia Street.
“My first thoughts go to the victim and their family and other people who were involved, you know, the witnesses and the first responders,” Johnstone told the Record. “It's pretty traumatic to be exposed to that kind of road violence, really. So I am thinking about them a lot.”
Johnstone said he has not spoken to the police department, but he has spoken to engineering. While it’s not a “high-danger location” compared to others in the city, in terms of ICBC statistics, he said it’s a location that has been highlighted as a place in need of improvements.
“For a variety of technical reasons, there's no easy solution in that space. If there was an easy solution, it would have been implemented already,” he said. “So we do have money right now in the capital budget to find the solutions. And it has been a longstanding gap.”
Johnstone said he’s asking staff to accelerate planning for the work that’s contemplated for the area. He also wants staff to consider interim measures that may be possible until a long-term solution is found for that area.
“I think the long-term solution is going to be millions of dollars and a complicated realignment of the road,” he said. “I want them to find out if there's any interim measures that we can safely do on that site.”
Because the area is also a designated truck route and is on the major road network, Johnstone said he will be asking TransLink and the Ministry of Transportation to cooperate with the city on finding both interim and long -term solutions.
“I think the public expects us to work together for a solution,” he said.
Stretch of East Columbia is "a challenge" for safety
Johnstone said a number of technical issues make this challenging site to tackle.
“The road isn't wide enough for the amount of traffic that wants to go through it,” he said. “The road lanes are only three metres wide and the sidewalk is only two metres wide, with a concrete wall on one side of it. So, if we try to expand the sidewalk or create buffer space, we can't; there's no room to go into the roadway there.”
Johnstone said that means the city would either need to move a concrete wall that’s next to the sidewalk or to reduce the number of vehicle lanes on that section of East Columbia Street. He noted that the concrete wall isn’t located on city land and belongs to the owners of that property.
“Reducing the lanes will be a challenge … because it is the major road network,” he said.
Some people on social media have suggested a guard rail should be erected at that location to protect pedestrians from the trucks that are rounding that corner as they come off of Brunette Avenue.
“Even if we try to install a barrier in that space, there is concern it doesn't create enough space – so the sidewalk then would not be wide enough to provide accessibility, if we put the barriers there,” he explained. “And if we put the barrier on the road, then it pushes the cars over into the oncoming lanes and increases the danger of impacts there.”
While it may sound like excuses, Johnstone said it a really complicated spot to try to fix.
“It's been identified for years now and it's in our five-year plan to do some work on that, but the solutions are not easy to find,” he said. “They are really challenging.”
Johnstone said there are additional technical issues associated with realigning the road at that location, but he wants the City of New Westminster to find an interim solution and he wants to find out if TransLink and the Ministry of Transportation will help the city in finding that interim solution.
“Because right now, throughput is prioritized through there on the major road network, and I think we need to prioritize the safety of people in the community,” he said.
Johnstone said safer transportation and safer pedestrian spaces is what got him involved in local government, Johnstone said.
“You know, it saddens me and it angers me. The names like Eric Stonehouse and Gemma Snowball are in my mind all the time, people in the community who have died from pedestrian accidents,” he said. “And you know, because of that, that's why I'm doing this work.”
Johnstone said pedestrian safety is why he’ll continue to call for modernization of the Motor Vehicle Act and better vehicle safety regulations for Transport Canada and for more tools from ICBC.
“I want us to have the safest streets in the Lower Mainland,” he said. “I think that what we need to do right now in the city is, once the police have done their work and have determined what the causes are, we have to bring that engineering lens and fix the space so that the same sort of incident doesn't happen again.”
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