River Drive residents are tired of being cut off from the rest of their West End neighbours.
Elmer Rudolph, president of the West End Residents’ Association, is concerned River Drive residents are being cut off from the rest of the neighbourhood, as a result of the traffic changes made in 2008. The province's Border Infrastructure Program, which involved a number of changes to Stewardson Way and Sixth Avenue for motorists accessing the Queensborough Bridge, included the removal of a pedestrian and cyclist crossing at Sixth Avenue and Stewardson Way.
Since the project was completed, Rudolph said River Drive residents often have had to walk an additional 1.7 kilometres to get to a crosswalk that allows them to get to services that are within walking distance.
“They are not walking. They are driving wherever they go,” he said. “They have lost their pedestrian access to their park, their elementary school and bus stops.”
Rudolph said residents have waited many years to have “reasonable” access to services for which they pay taxes, including parks, schools and bus stops.
“We don’t think that is too much to ask,” he said.
Although the province stated residents could use a crosswalk “slightly to the east” of the previous crossing to get to Grimston Park and Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School, Rudolph said the distance is akin to walking from city hall up to London Drugs at Westminster Centre and back to city hall.
“How frustrating is that? How unfair is that?” Rudolph said of the extra walk required for kids to get to school.
With safe crossings available at Fifth Avenue and near the 22nd Street SkyTrain station, Rudolph said it’s not uncommon to see pedestrians trying to get to River Drive or the Kruger site running across Stewardson Way to avoid out-of-the way routes. Several children living on River Drive attend Lord Tweedsmuir, with a trail offering a way to get partway to school.
“Some parts of the trail are very isolated,” he said. “There is shrubbery on both sides. I would not send my child down there if it wasn’t broad daylight. I wouldn’t like to walk there myself. It is so isolated.”
When officials from the province’s Border Infrastructure Program attended a West End Residents’ Association meeting back in 2004, Rudolph said residents were told the grade-level crosswalk would be replaced with an overpass. In the subsequent years, he said the issued “ping-ponged back and forth” between the city, the province and TransLink.
The West End Residents’ Associations has proposed a number of alternatives for funding the project through the years.
“Just stalling,” Rudolph said of the response, “It has not gone anywhere. Nothing has improved.”
In 2007, the West End Residents’ Association passed a resolution to protest the removal of the pedestrian and cyclist crossing at Sixth Avenue and Stewardson Way, and to protest the transection of the community by the changes proposed by the construction project.
River Drive residents gave city council and Border Infrastructure Program officials an earful about their concerns at a 2007 council meeting, at which time council stressed it was meeting with provincial politicians and Border Infrastructure Program officials to address the need for a crossing, such as an overpass, at or near the crossing that existed at Sixth Avenue and Stewardson Way.
During a recent presentation to city council, Rudolph informed council that residents have done some research and been told a prefabricated, no-frills overpass could be built for $2 million – far less than the $7 million price tag TransLink told them it would cost to build a 65-metre structure
“We are not going down there to whine,” he said. “We have gone back with some new information.”
Coun. Jonathan Cote said the city’s position seven years ago was that there was no reason to remove the at-grade crossing on Stewardson, but the province didn’t agree. He believes an at-grade crossing may be the most economical way to improve pedestrian and cyclist access to River Drive.
Jim Lowrie, the city’s director of engineering, said his department will be looking into the issue this year.
