3 pedestrian collisions in 3 days on 22nd St., but no plan for quick road safety fixes

The City of Saskatoon says it will collect more data on pedestrian-vehicle collisions on busy 22nd Street West and not make immediate road safety changes to the area.

That's despite the fact that at least three pedestrians were hit by cars recently on 22nd over three consecutive days.

"We'd prefer to wait to get the statistics and do our homework before we react," said Jay Magus, the city's acting director of transportation.

3 hits in 3 days

On Dec. 1, a man was hit by a car driven by a 16-year-old girl while he crossed 22nd Street at Avenue W, which has a traffic signal. The man was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. Saskatoon police say the pedestrian was found to be at fault and charges against him are pending.

A day later, just the next block over on Avenue V, a 22-year-old man was struck by a 37-year-old male driver while the pedestrian crossed at the intersection.

• Saskatoon pedestrian struck by vehicle on 22nd Street

And on the evening of Dec. 3 — in an incident that went unreported to media by police — a 25-year-old man who had been drinking and who jaywalked across 22nd near Avenue P was also hit by a driver.

Magus only found out about the trio of events shortly before speaking to CBC News, but he said "typically, three in three days wouldn't trigger anything" immediate.

So far in 2017, the total number of collisions on 22nd from Avenue H to Whitney Avenue — which last weekend's crash sites fall within — has been nine, resulting in eight injuries and one death.

That's up from 2016, when the same stretch of road was host to five collisions.   

'No magic pill'

Collisions on 22nd Street West are sadly not a new phenomenon.

The street — measuring around three kilometres long up to Circle Drive South — is difficult to get a handle on due to the wide spread of collisions at various avenues, not to mention random incident-by-incident factors like weather, street conditions and human behaviour.

"There's no magic pill," said Magus. "We're dealing with humans walking and humans driving."

Still, it's not like the city hasn't done anything in recent years.

In 2011, Pat Lorje, then-councillor for Ward 2, which includes Circle Drive West, prompted the city to look at new safety measures to reduce the number of collisions.

The next year, new pedestrian-activated traffic-stoppers (like the one shown below) were installed at the intersections at Avenues M and R.

Signs warning of "high pedestrian collision" areas have also popped up.

Those new traffic-stoppers helped reduce the number of pedestrian-vehicle collisions by 52 per cent, according to a report from the city in 2015.

More ideas — what Magus refers to as "softer recommendations" — were suggested that same year.

One of them was to narrow the driving lanes, which is thought to make drivers slow down.

Magus says that particular idea is tied to the city's future bus-rapid-transit system, of which 22nd Street is a major corridor.

But pre-construction work on the BRT system is not expected to start until the summer or fall of 2018, and what sections of the BRT system will be built first remains unclear.

Another idea from 2015 was to experiment with traffic light signals so that maybe five or six consecutive traffic lights don't all flash green at once. That creates what Magus calls a "green wave" which leads to "vehicles keeping their speeds or maybe increasing their speeds."

The city has done "a little bit of work" to reverse that, according to Magus. But he added, "We get complaints from drivers saying, 'I had to stop at the red light and there's nobody at the side street.'"

Other ideas floated in 2015 included more crossing devices, electronic displays showing people how fast they're driving and police crackdowns on jaywalkers and speeders.

• New speed warning signs barely slow down drivers: report

But bigger ideas, such as installing fences in the middle of 22nd Street or near the sidewalks, remain in park while the city gathers more data.

"The next step is we have our list of soft measures that we're implementing and we will report to council some time in the next couple of years," said Magus.

A sign of west-side neglect?

Neither Magus, nor Hilary Gough, the current city councillor for Ward 2, think a fence is the solution.

"If a pedestrian's impaired, the fence in the middle has no benefit," said Magus. "They still have to cross half the road to get to the fence."

"When I walk and drive down those streets as a pedestrian, it's not something that I appreciate," said Gough.

Lorje, Gough's predecessor in Ward 2, said the recent spike in collisions — in spite of the new traffic-stoppers and signs — is "sad."

But she's not surprised.

"I had predicted at the time when they made the changes that they weren't going to work and it's not pleasant to be proved right when it means that someone is lying in a hospital bed having been hit by a car," said Lorje.

"Cynically I could say it's because it's on the west side," continued Lorje. "The west side of Saskatoon does not receive the same level of services and the same level of attention as does the east side of the city."

Gough doesn't agree with that.

"The idea that we're ignoring what goes on on the west side is simply not the case," said Gough.

"It's not a matter of councillors scrapping for every dollar or minute of a snow grader and trying to make sure their ward gets the most."

'Comes down to money and dollars'

But money and budget prioritizing are definitely factors, said Troy Davies, a fellow councillor and the director of public affairs for MD Ambulance.

"It comes down to money and dollars," said Davies. "An overpass on 22nd Street is an extreme amount of money and then you're looking at it having to be high enough because we still have a lot of semis that go down that; it's a major artery of our downtown currently.

"I could point out 16 other things," Davies added, "that would be more effective and affect more people in the city when you're looking at budgets and things that we need from crossings to … it's endless."

Paramedics working for MD Ambulance convinced the organization to speak out last week about what it called a recent "spike" in overall collisions in the city.

• Spike in people hit by cars prompts warning from paramedics in Saskatoon

According to Davies, paramedics responded to 45 car-versus-pedestrian collisions between August and last week — compared to 31 over the same period in 2016.

'Expect the unexpected' 

So while the city mulls its next steps, what can people do in the meantime — on 22nd or anywhere else — to avoid becoming yet another sad statistic?

"Make eye contact with the driver before crossing the street," Davies said to pedestrians.

And motorists?

"When you're driving down 22nd Street, you almost expect the unexpected."