With year 3 of this council’s term complete, it’s time for our annual report card! See our 2024 and 2023 scores here. As always, we look for every road safety motion that came to council, give it an “impact score” multiplier, and award points based on how each person voted. Rhetoric and intent don’t matter, action (votes) are what count.
Council saw some turnover this year, with the retirement of Clr Carr and the election of Clr Boyle to the provincial NDP. Fortunately, their replacements (Maloney and Orr) were true road safety champions in 2025. Elections have consequences!
This year saw 12 different road safety-related motions or amendments come to council, the most all term. We see this as a sign of Vancouver’s growing recognition of this issue. Here’s are the scores, with each vote detailed below:
Rolling back Water St pedestrianization (PASSED; negative motion, impact = –2)
In 2024, Water Street was pedestrianized for 3 blocks. Despite some subpar implementation, the pilot was a resounding success, with residents and visitors loving it, and businesses on the whole supportive. Inexplicably, council caved to a few loud (but non-representative) complaints and made it car-free Sundays (10am-4pm) only for 2025. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t capture the magic of 2024. No business is going to repeatedly set up and tear down expanded patios or street furniture for one 8-hour period a week. One of the most promising developments of 2024 was completely undone.
Granville St safety improvements (PASSED; impact = 1)
A unanimously-passed amendment from Clr Maloney directed staff to explore several safety and accessibility improvements to Granville. Low impact here because it’s only a directive to explore; we’ll wait to see what staff bring back and how council votes then.
School Active Travel Planning Program improvements (PASSED; impact = 3)
A great motion co-sponsored by Clrs Meiszner and Dominato will increase the scope of the program used to help parents and kids get safety upgrades around local schools. We discussed this in more detail here.
Renewing Vancouver’s Vision Zero Plan (PASSED; impact = 4)
Vancouver has had a “Moving Towards Zero” plan for years but has failed to make meaningful progress. Clr Maloney tasked the city with refreshing it, using evidence based approaches and clear metrics. It was great to see this pass unanimously! Into 2026, we know City staff are actively working on this plan and consulting with relevant stakeholders, ourselves included. We’re excited to see this work take shape.
“Safer Slower Streets” (PASSED; impact = 5)
This motion, initiated by Clr Fry last year, will gradually reduce speeds on non-arterials in Vancouver to 30km/h. This is a massive win, and again we’re thrilled to see it had unanimous support. We hope to one day see this extended to arterials too.
The only drawback? The program has to be rolled out in phases and at huge expense, because of an archaic rule imposed by the Province. They could change this any time.
Arbutus Greenway & Kent Ave improvements (PASSED, impact = 2)
Anyone who has ridden from the Arbutus Greenway down to Kent and beyond knows there’s a big gap; and Kent itself is downright miserable. A motion from Clr Klassen asks the city to fix this gap and create a connected, AAA bike path in South Vancouver. The only reason it’s not higher impact is that no funding was attached to this request, making us wonder how this bold plan will actually become a reality – especially given this year’s budget cuts…
“Zero means zero”: 0% property tax increase (PASSED; negative motion, impact = –4).
“Zero means zero” is a great slogan when it comes to traffic deaths, but not for funding the very road safety programs that save lives. Unfortunately, Mayor Sim and ABC decided to put vibes over reason, and despite massive public outcry, voted to protect the ultra-wealthy with a 0% property tax increase – a big cut when considering inflation. We’ve already seen the impacts, with 300 staff laid off including many doing important active transportation work. Road safety upgrades were already years behind schedule (see two items below) and this only exacerbates the problem. This decision will reverberate for years.
Councillors Maloney, Orr, Fry, and Bligh put up a strong fight opposing this direction, and proposed several (failed) amendments trying to claw back important services.
Committing to UBCx (PASSED; impact = 1)
A motion co-sponsored by Clrs Maloney & Orr re-affirmed the city’s commitment to building UBCx, connecting the Millennium Line SkyTrain all the way to UBC. A small impact score because the truth is, the city has already long-supported this project and can’t really do much to move it forward. The decision is in the hands of the Provincial and Federal governments.
Emergency motion: Adding a flashing crosswalk to 16th and Willow (PASSED; impact = 1)
On October 14, a terrible crash occurred where a driver at 16th and Willow ran over a woman pushing a stroller and left her fighting for her life. Residents in this neighbourhood had been asking for a flashing beacon for years, and it was on the City’s list – unfortunately, the City has a backlog of hundreds of intersections to improve, means these small improvements take many years.
In response to this incident, and the resulting protest, Clr Dominato raised an emergency motion to expedite installing a flashing beacon at this site. While this is a positive development (and shows that organization works!), it doesn’t fix the systemic issue: it just puts 16th and Willow at the front of the line, and bumps everything else down a spot. The backlog remains as long as ever. The program to add signals, crosswalks, and flashing beacons needs to be massively expanded. ABC’s platform said they’d double the number every year – a promise which so far has gone unfulfilled.
Safe Streets for Trick or Treat (FAILED; impact =3)
Halloween is by far the most dangerous night of the year for kids on the street. Clr Maloney had a motion to make it super easy for residents to set up Halloween car-free trick-or-treat block parties, as other cities in North America have done. Importantly, and increasing the impact, it would have also made the entire block party permitting process simpler and more accessible.
Unfortunately, ABC, led by Clr Montague (who incidentally lives either in North Vancouver or Kelowna, but certainly not Vancouver) decided to vote this down. Sorry, kids.
No Right on Red at Vancouver’s most dangerous intersections (PASSED; impact = 4).
Right on red is one of the main causes of pedestrians being hit by drivers at intersections. This motion from Clr Maloney will look at banning it from the most high-conflict intersections across the city. We wrote much more about it here. This study will be wrapped in to the larger VZ refresh, and we’ll be looking for concrete action in 2026.
Better speed data collection (PASSED; impact = 3)
In the past, we’ve seen councillors (*cough* ABC) vote against road safety motions due to not having enough “data” to make the obvious decision. This motion from Clr Orr is a great pushback. It seeks to collect detailed speed data from every fatal crash, which will help build the case for making road improvements for the more skeptical folks in the chamber.
In Conclusion
In 2025, we saw 12 pedestrians killed on Vancouver roads, nearly double the 7 killed in 2024. In addition, another 11 were killed in the horrific Lapu Lapu day tragedy.
While we saw some promising actions from council, the grim evidence shows that we have a very long way to go. A lot of the 2025 motions, especially the VZ policy refresh, will set critical building blocks for the future of transportation in this city.
That said, this year’s budget cuts are also going to set us back in a big way. The good news is there’s an election this year! And we’re going to do everything in our power to make road safety a key election issue.
On that note, here’s a look at the average score of each councillor for this current term:
Expect much more analysis and election coverage leading up to the October vote. Happy New Year from all of us at Vision Zero Vancouver.
Vision Zero Vancouver 