Road Safety Rollbacks at Vancouver Council

We recognize that City staff are in a bind as they try to carry out the work Council has directed them to while reeling from the impacts of the Zero Means Zero budget. The report makes clear that many items are recommended for termination due to budget constraints, likely as a direct result of this austerity budget.

We are sharing below the letter we sent to Mayor and Council earlier today, outlining our concerns about the road safety impacts of these recommendations (for the purposes of this blog post we’ve added a few images, but you can also see the letter exactly as sent here).

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Dear Mayor and Councillors, 

We are writing on behalf of Vision Zero Vancouver to share our concerns about some of the recommendations outlined in Report 7: Outstanding Council Motions, to be heard at the upcoming March 10th Council meeting.

The report recommends stalling, scaling back, or altogether cancelling several important road safety motions previously passed at Council. Much of this is work that we, alongside dozens of others, campaigned for and gave credit to the City for passing. It is gut-wrenching to discover items that are no longer recommended to go forward due to budget constraints that appear to be the direct result of the current austerity budget. 

It is with displeasure that we are writing to you again today to advocate for things that we’ve already successfully advocated for. Specifically, there are three motions we would like to call your attention to from this report: 

1. Bus Lanes (#15. Taking Urgent Action to Boost Street Capacity and Speed Up Transit Service For Vancouverites). This Motion passed unanimously at Council back in the summer of 2024 and promised us 9 new bus lanes across the city, delivered at a pace of at least 2 lanes per year. This work is already alarmingly behind schedule, and we’re concerned that this recommendation to postpone 4 of the lanes even further will be the final nail in the coffin. Bus lanes are an inexpensive, quick intervention resulting in measurable benefits almost immediately – perfect for a tight budget year. We also note that the rationale for delay includes “Advisability of evaluating outcomes of the first five corridors before investing in work on the next four corridors.” We would like to remind Council that bus lanes are well studied around the world, and it is neither in keeping with the previously passed motion nor a good use of limited resources to further study them here before implementation. 

2. Truck Sideguards (#8 Advocating for the Requirement of Side Guards on Heavy Trucks in Urban Areas). This Motion, from July 2022, mandated the installation of sideguards on City owned or contracted trucks. It came about after 28-year-old Agustín Beltrán was killed on his bike downtown, struck by the driver of a dump truck which did not have sideguards. The Motion passed in an emotional meeting attended by multiple family members of the Beltrán family.  As a reminder, a US National Transportation Safety Board study in 2014 found that side guards could mitigate 9 of 10 injuries in side collisions. The report now recommends “merge with other work/close” for this project, citing funding constraints. It also notes that some of the city fleet has been updated. We urge Council to request and publicize the exact number and percentage of the city fleet that has had this retrofit in the three and a half years since this passed, a cost estimate to do the remainder, and an explanation for why this simple life-saving intervention is being stopped. 

3. Cornwall Ave Upgrades (#10 Protecting People on Cornwall Avenue). Vision Zero Vancouver was formed in the summer of 2022 after a 5-year-old child was seriously injured in a horrific car crash on Cornwall. In spring 2023 we were thrilled to see Council bring forward a motion to lower the speed limit to 30km/h on this street. Unfortunately, Council did not pass this motion as written, instead passing a watered down version which reduced the speed limit to 40km/hr. Though disappointed, we even applauded this progress. The motion as passed also included a report back from staff on several other safety upgrades for the street including adding Leading Pedestrian Intervals, improving intersection sightlines, bus priority, and exploring the possibility of an active transportation lane. The Report before Council now states that “Staff recommends no further safety improvements specific to this area.” We question how we can continue to accept 27 people killed or injured on this stretch every year with no further safety improvements recommended.

We urge Council to consider alternatives to the recommended roll-backs of these three motions, all of which were unanimously approved previously and represent meaningful road safety improvements. If further information is helpful, you can reach out to us anytime and we will do our best to assist.