Alex John didn’t know Fernanda Girotto, the 15-year-old international student from Brazil killed on a crosswalk just outside his church, but to him her death felt personal.
John, a comptroller at Cariboo Christian Fellowship at the bottom of Cariboo Hill, has lobbied the City of Burnaby for a year to install a pedestrian-controlled light at the crosswalk by his church.
He was on the phone with the city’s engineering department just before Christmas, reiterating his concerns.
Then, last Wednesday, he heard the sirens.
“I live two minutes from the church,” he said. “I heard all these fire engines, ambulances and then the person who works here, who gets in early, she texted me, ‘Alex, I think there’s been a fatal accident here.’ I took it very personally because it was something that I was fighting for.”
The next day, a cyclist was hit near the crosswalk, and, three days after that, a hit-and-run at the crossing left a man, Amancio Hernandez, with fractures to his face, ribs, pelvis, knee and hand.
On Monday the city announced it would install pedestrian-controlled flashing amber lights at the crosswalk within two weeks and look into putting in a fully activated pedestrian traffic light (red, amber and green) in the next four or five months.
“I thank God,” John told the NOW Tuesday. “This is news that we welcome after a year or so of discussing matters with them … We’re really, really happy that they finally have decided, but the saddest thing is that we didn’t have to wait for somebody to die in order for this to happen.”
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan offered condolences to Girotto’s family at a city council meeting Monday and commended the city’s public safety committee for “moving very quickly” to resolve safety concerns on Cariboo Road.
But area residents who’ve lobbied the city for a pedestrian light in the area for more than 10 years and warned municipal officials it was only a matter of time before someone was killed, think the decision is tragically overdue.
“It’s way past time,” co-op resident Kay McDonald said. “If that had been in there, that girl would still be alive. I can’t look at it any other way.”
McDonald, who’s lived at the Cariboo Heights co-op since 1999, first petitioned the city about getting a traffic light at Cariboo Road and Cariboo Drive in 2004.
In May 2007, she and others contacted city hall again, this time on behalf of Arturo Breton, a co-op neighbour with disabilities, to get a signalized pedestrian light.
The city rejected the idea, saying there wasn’t enough pedestrian traffic at the intersection to warrant a light.
They did approve the installation of the current marked crosswalk 140 metres north of Cariboo Drive, but they once again rejected a light based on pedestrian numbers.
Residents weren’t satisfied.
“I never was. I always thought we should have a light,” McDonald said.
Bill Schultz, who attends Cariboo Christian Fellowship, thought there should be a light too.
He contacted Coun. Sav Dhaliwal, vice-chair of the city’s public safety committee, this past July to raise concerns about the crosswalk and ask for a light.
After attending a public safety committee meeting in November with John, the pair again raised concerns with Dhaliwal after a staff report focused on speed control measures and changes to the intersection of Cariboo Road and Cariboo Drive, instead of proposing a pedestrian light.
The proposals in the report were unanimously accepted by city council on Dec. 4.
“I was so sick to my stomach because it could have been avoided,” Schultz said of Girotto’s death.
The chorus of voices calling for a pedestrian light since Girotto’s death and the hit-and-run Saturday has swelled.
An online petition launched last Wednesday had attracted more than 9,600 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.
One of them belongs to Girotto’s mom, Rosana Nascimento Girotto.
“My daughter Fernanda Nascimento Girotto, 14, left Alegre, Brazil full of life and dreams to do an exchange in Canada and was run over and killed in this extremely dangerous place,” she wrote in a comment. “I cannot imagine why there is not a traffic light there. … How many lives will still have to be taken for local authorities to take action?”
At Monday’s council meeting, however, councillors and the mayor said there’s no way to make a city 100 per cent safe and council had relied on staff recommendation to address residents’ concerns.
“It wasn’t a location where we were seeing frequent car accidents or frequent traffic problems,” Corrigan said, “and certainly we weren’t seeing high numbers of pedestrians, so there was no justification from a staff point of view or from the public safety committee’s point of view to do any more, but the fact that we’ve had these incidents has made everyone reconsider the best advice we’ve got and to look at doing more.”
Dhaliwal said the city was doing what it could, and added that Cariboo Drive is a perfect example of why municipalities should be allowed to use photo radar to enforce speed limits.
“Eventually, enforcement does work,” he said. “I know I’ve taken my share of tickets, and every time I take one or two, I smarten up.”
Before the city’s change of heart about the light Monday afternoon, councillors and senior staff joined RCMP members at the crosswalk early Monday morning while it was still dark, according to Coun. Pietro Calendino, chair of the committee.
“We actually personally went there, and we tried to cross and it was difficult,” he told the NOW.
Asked why such a visit hadn’t happened earlier, Calendino said councillors rely on staff for such work.
“We don’t always go to every area that people complain about,” he said. “Staff does the work for us and they make recommendations. We rely a lot on our traffic engineers.”
Dhaliwal agreed.
“I would suggest to you every place, every street cross is a gamble, right through the city,” he said. “It’s not possible to address every crosswalk with a light, so what you rely on is the numbers.”
That being said, Dhaliwal also suggested it might be time to revisit relying on numbers alone.
“At what point do you say, well, it doesn’t meet the threshold of numbers perhaps, but here are the other criteria, the other factors that maybe should be taken into consideration,” he said. “If the numbers themselves have failed us, in a way, what else could we do?”
For John, that idea may be the silver lining to his neighbours’ decade-long ordeal.
“We’re praying that we will learn something from this, that if there’s a need somewhere else and somebody brings it up, that they will listen to it,” he said.
Changes coming to the crosswalk
- reflective pavement markers along Cariboo Road
- yellow beacons on existing advanced pedestrian warning signs
- electronic message boards northbound and southbound urging drivers to slow down
- pedestrian activated flashing amber signal with downlighting onto crosswalk
Timeline
- 2004, petition launched by residents of the Cariboo Heights co-op calling for a traffic light at Cariboo Road and Cariboo Drive
- February 2007, city receives letters calling for pedestrian light at Cariboo Road and Cariboo Drive
- March 2007, city council accepts staff recommendation not to put in a pedestrian light
- Dec. 10, 2007, city council approves a staff recommendation to install a marked crosswalk
- January 2008, marked crosswalk is first installed on Cariboo Road, 140 metres north of Cariboo Drive
- Early 2015, the crosswalk is upgraded with the addition of overhead signs to improve visibility as part of the realignment of Cariboo Road.
- Late 2015, the surrounding street lights are upgraded to LED
- 2017, city receives five complaints about the safety of the crosswalk
- Nov. 9, 2017, a youth from Cariboo Hill Salvation Army church is injured in a hit-and-run on the crosswalk. The teen’s foot is run over and her arm is hit by a rearview mirror
- Nov. 9, 2017, public safety committee receives staff report on proposed speed enforcement measures and changes to the intersection of Cariboo Road and Cariboo Drive. The crosswalk is not addressed.
- Dec. 4, city council approves proposals.
- Jan. 9, an electronic speed reader board is installed in the northbound downhill direction on Cariboo Road near Cariboo Drive
- Jan. 17, 2018, Fernanda Girotto, a 15-year-old international student from Brazil, is killed on the crosswalk after being hit by a northbound vehicle
- Jan. 18, 2018, a cyclist is struck near the crosswalk, sustaining minor injuries
- Jan. 21, 2018, Amancio Hernandez is hit on the crosswalk by a northbound vehicle, sustaining fractures to his face, ribs, pelvis, knee and hand. The driver fails to stop at the scene.
- Jan. 22, 2018, City of Burnaby announces it will install a pedestrian- controlled traffic light
