{"id":68050,"date":"2023-11-27T08:30:55","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T13:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=68050"},"modified":"2023-11-30T13:38:40","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T18:38:40","slug":"the-pedestrian-blood-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2023\/11\/27\/the-pedestrian-blood-sacrifice\/","title":{"rendered":"REID: The pedestrian blood sacrifice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dylan<\/a><\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, I moved into a new condo building in the Garment District south-west of Queen and Spadina. The area had been mostly an employment area for decades, but thanks to the innovative \u201cKings\u201d planning policy<\/a> this somewhat deserted area was starting to host new mid-rise residences. To walk north to Queen West, Kensington Market, and other nearby destinations, we new residents had to cross at Brant and Richmond West, which had no traffic control. Although Richmond was one-way, so we only had to look in one direction, cars came barrelling along it around a curve at high speed. It was not safe at all.<\/p>\n

We asked the City to install a traffic light. A traffic engineer came to a meeting and explained to us why it just wasn\u2019t warranted. I can\u2019t remember the details, but probably he said not enough people crossed there and it was too close to the traffic lights at Spadina.<\/p>\n

Sometime later, a young woman was killed by a vehicle\/driver while she was crossing Richmond at that intersection. Not long after that tragedy, a traffic light was installed.<\/p>\n

I took to calling this the \u201cPedestrian Blood Sacrifice.\u201d It so often seems to require that a pedestrian be killed or seriously injured, their blood spilled on the asphalt and flowers placed at a makeshift memorial altar nearby, in order to get a pedestrian safety measure installed. I\u2019ve used this phrase before<\/a> (PDF), but a recent development has brought it into focus again.<\/p>\n

At this month’s City Council meeting, as part of a larger road safety item<\/a>, Councillor Brad Bradford moved a motion:<\/p>\n

to amend the Traffic Control Warrants used to evaluate the need for All-Way Stop Control, Pedestrian Crossovers and Traffic Control Signals so that the \u201cCollision Hazard\u201d warrant is satisfied if there has been at least one potentially preventable collision classified as a KSI (\u201cKilled or Seriously Injured\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To be clear, this is a good motion and I\u2019m happy Councillor Bradford successfully got it passed.<\/p>\n

The existing \u201cwarrant\u201d system doesn\u2019t make it automatic that an intersection will qualify for a safety review, let alone safety measures, if a pedestrian gets killed there. The warrants are the conditions required in order for staff to recommend installing traffic controls, and they often require a record of multiple collisions over several years, as well as a certain number of pedestrian crossings a day at a location that is, by definition (given there is no existing traffic control), dangerous.<\/p>\n

Some recent cases illustrate this situation. Often these cases have happened in places where the local community had long been telling the City that it was dangerous for pedestrians \u2013 Gillian Kranias wrote about such a case<\/a> here earlier this year. Meanwhile, this month Etobicoke and York Community Council had to pass a motion<\/a> to ask staff to implement safety measures at Brown\u2019s Line and Jellicoe after a young woman was killed by a driver there \u2013 it was not automatic.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s good that, in the future, just one pedestrian death or serious injury will be enough to satisfy the collisions warrant (though that doesn\u2019t guarantee changes \u2013 there are other warrant conditions as well).<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, this motion is notable for literally codifying the pedestrian blood sacrifice. The path to overcoming the very restrictive traffic control warrants in places that the community might already have identified as dangerous for pedestrians is to have a pedestrian get killed or seriously injured at that location.<\/p>\n

\n

Pandering. Can we not get in front of this? Do the dead get the stuff named after them? The Jane Doe Memorial Crossing? Better to have the city step up, do the right thing, and keep Jane alive.<\/p>\n

— Peter Burnside @peterburnside (@peterburnside) November 10, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n