I try not to be a jealous person, but I am envious of those Burnaby residents who have speed humps on their quiet residential streets.
The city has installed these humps over the years to streets that are known as “ratrunner” routes in which commuters trying to shave tie off their commutes by avoiding busy roads like Hastings or Lougheed Highway.
The problem is that these drivers are maniacs. They drive at insane speeds considering they are heading through often narrow residential streets. These are single-family neighbourhoods with lots of kids.
The faster these drivers go, the more dangerous they become.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I live in the area just north of Brentwood shopping mall and it’s a ratrunners’ paradise. Drivers race between Delta Avenue and Willingdon. One of these drivers ended up upside down. I also saw a different driver who was going so fast he side-swiped my parked car. He actually bounced off of it, managing to gain control.
Did he stop?
Of course not.
He just kept driving at high speed and disappeared before I could get his licence plate number.
These kinds of things happened a lot in our neighbourhood. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed. One problem is that when cars are parked on both sides of the road, the street is really narrow. I’ve seen buses struggled to negotiate this road.
Things got better in 2020 because so many people were working from home. It was amazing to have quiet streets and people crossing the road without fearing for their lives.
But people are getting back to normal and that means the ratrunners have returned.
I hope that the City of Burnaby will hear my plea and make more changes to slow down these streets and make them want to stick to the main roads.
J. Adams, Burnaby
