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Neighbours say traffic-calming measures are long overdue along Nanaimo Street between Kingsway and the Grandview Highway, the site of more than 120 injuries or deaths from 2019 to 2023
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Last Thursday, a cyclist was struck and killed by a five-tonne delivery truck at the corner of Nanaimo Street and Kingsway in east Vancouver.
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The fatal collision came less than a month after a 32-year-old man was hospitalized with life-altering injuries after being struck by a hit-and-run driver on Nanaimo Street near 29th Avenue, just a few blocks north on Nanaimo.
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Two weeks before that, a two-vehicle collision forced a car over the sidewalk and through the fence of a home near the same corner. There were no injuries but the car crashed just metres from a bus stop where at least four people were waiting.
Such incidents are all too familiar to people who live and commute along this stretch of Nanaimo Street between Kingsway and the Grandview Highway. Car crashes along the stretch of Nanaimo between Kingsway and Grandview caused more than 120 injuries or deaths from 2019 to 2023 — about 25 per year on average.
Traffic-calming measures are long overdue, residents and activists say.
“Where there are crashes, there are, of course, a lot of close calls,” said Sieva Kimajeu, who lives in the neighbourhood and volunteers with Vision Zero Vancouver, a group that advocates safer streets. “I tend to avoid walking on Nanaimo anymore.”
He’s not the only one.
“I live near here, and walking down Nanaimo daily from the station I’ve been telling anyone who would listen it’s not if I’ll get hit, but when,” one person wrote on a Reddit thread after the Nov. 12 hit-and-run.
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Another stretch of Nanaimo, between Hastings Street and East 1st Avenue, has a different story. Here, the city did set up traffic-calming measures between 2020 and 2022 to improve safety along the busy thoroughfare.
ICBC data show that traffic casualties dropped there by about 30 per cent — from 25 in 2019 to 17 in 2023, almost as low as during COVID-19, when fewer people and cars were on the road.
By contrast, pedestrian and cyclist casualties doubled on the southern stretch of Nanaimo between Grandview Highway and Kingsway during the same period, where no traffic calming measures have been installed.
The traffic-calming project on Nanaimo, north of East 1st Avenue, involved a number of things: the city reduced pedestrian crossing distances at key intersections, added several centre medians, painted in bike lanes, and reduced the number of traffic lanes from four to two (but with a centre left turn lane).
The changes cost about $3 million and were completed along with sewer upgrades, according to the city. TransLink provided some funding for the biking improvements.
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Kimajeu said a number of similar measures could be added to Nanaimo between Kingsway and Grandview Highway, like reducing the number of traffic lanes and adding curb extensions to shorten crossing distance.
“It’s easier for pedestrians to cross the street where there’s just two traffic lanes,” he said. “Drivers are more likely to slow down and see you.”
Kimajeu pointed out the corner of Nanaimo Street and 29th Avenue, where the November hit-and-run took place, as a particularly high-risk intersection.
Data from ICBC supports his view.
There were 61 collisions at the intersection of Nanaimo Street and 29th Avenue between 2019 and 2023 — the most of any intersection between Kingsway and Grandview Highway. Twenty-six of the collisions caused casualties and two of them involved pedestrians.
Postmedia News used injury data from ICBC in this analysis. Casualties at major intersections along Nanaimo Street, including East 1st Avenue, Grandview Highway, Kingsway and East Broadway, were excluded in order to provide a more accurate picture of neighbourhood-level risks for drivers, cyclists, pedestrians and others.
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“It’s a concern for a lot of local residents who use Nanaimo,” Kimajeu said. “People are looking over their shoulders when they’re crossing the street.”
In a statement, city transportation staff said that any time there’s a traffic fatality they will take feedback from the investigation and work with VPD to implement changes to improve road safety.
“At this time, there are no scheduled changes planned for this section of Nanaimo,” the statement said.
The city said a traffic-calming project for the Trout Lake neighbourhood on the west side of Nanaimo is scheduled for 2026 or 2027, but Nanaimo Street itself isn’t part of the project.
“Major streets like Nanaimo are out of scope for this project,” according to the city.
City council needs to acknowledge that changes need to happen, Kimajeu said.
“There is a safety problem down here at this stretch of the Nanaimo, and it needs to be fixed,” he said.
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