Editor:
Now that our city council has, for years, said all the right things about pedestrian and bicyclist safety in New West, it's now time to act instead of once again shrugging shoulders and waiting for somebody else to fix the issue or, as some of council's supporters are already doing, bizarrely, yelling at the messenger who pointed this out almost a year ago.
If there's any steps to improve safety along the East Columbia Street section where the accident occurred, then that should be made a priority immediately — barriers of some sort, perhaps, traffic enforcement, etc. If the city needs to go through another body to get this done, then it should in a vocal, forceful manner, and as such, fight for the community it represents.
Our city council has support and endorsement from the provincial and federal NDP and needs to leverage that support to help us out with bigger-scale issues like this.
If this is truly TransLink's responsibility, then I expect council to be calling them out today, not tomorrow, not a few months from now, not when it's convenient; today, to get a solution in place.
Bureaucracy, in the case of this accident, has proved deadly, and it needs to stop. We have a dangerous stretch of road that needs to be fixed. Someone, somewhere needs to start doing their job.
Lastly, people need to start pushing more, get in contact with these people daily and ask why things are not getting done. The New West department of transportation can be reached here. Start emailing them until we get an answer.
Ted Knowles
