It feels like it’s open season on Burnaby pedestrians after a teen’s horrifying death on Thursday when a 14-year-old Byrne Creek student was hit by a dump truck.
I’m sitting here at my home office desk feeling like I’m going to vomit after reading this excellent NOW story by reporter Cornelia Naylor in which a resident details how she too was hit by a truck in the same area as Thursday’s death at 7100 - 11th Avenue.
That incident happened back in November 2021 and led to a meeting between the City of Burnaby, RCMP and residents who were fed up with the constant truck traffic in the area due to numerous construction projects.
This is what is so enraging.
The residents spoke up and warned everyone that someone had been hit and it was going to happen again – with someone possibly being killed.
As our story details, the police did conduct some commercial truck inspections near the crash site – leading to more than half of the trucks being taken off the road due to violations. (The fact that more than 50% of these trucks were too dangerous to be on the road is alarming all on its own.)
The stretch of road where the teen was killed also has no sidewalks, but after the meeting, vehicles were barred from parking on one side of the road to provide more walking space.
But that simply is not enough.
“This was completely inevitable to happen one day because there’s terrible traffic management around here,” local resident Elise Frith told the NOW in our story.
That’s what is so depressing – the inevitability of it all.
The residents spoke up, highlighted the problem and there just wasn’t enough done to ensure the safety of residents.
It’s not like this was some sort of surprise.
This feels so familiar to what happened a few years ago when residents along Cariboo Road warned the City of Burnaby over and over again about safety issues and the need for a traffic light at a crosswalk.
But the traffic light was only installed after 14-year-old Fernanda Girotto, a Brazilian exchange student, was struck and killed while walking in a crosswalk on Cariboo Road on Jan. 17, 2018.
Yes, 14 years old, the same age as Thursday’s victim.
Now, it should be noted that the city has really ramped up its spending on adding sidewalks in Burnaby. It is putting in far more money each year and expanding the amount of sidewalks it builds each year. The city wants to build more than 20 kilometres of new sidewalks each year. This is more than it’s ever planned on before and it’s clearly a priority.
I mention this because, as I’ve written before, some neighbourhoods have actually fought the construction of new sidewalks over such weak concerns as a loss of parking and landscaping.
I hope all of these folks fighting the sidewalks will look at what happened on Thursday and realize that sidewalks save the lives of pedestrians - so maybe give your NIMBY concerns a rest.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
