Downtown councillor and Coast-reader-favourite Dawn Sloane completed an after-dark safety audit of the Common this week. (New rule: Every public official charged with protecting public safety downtown should have to tour the Common at night. As of today, it's mandatory. Agreed? Great.)
Sloane, with a handful of other city staffers, gamboled around the Common at about 6pm and identified specific areas where lighting (or shrubbery, or sightlines) contributed to after-dark insecurity.
"We found a lot of places where people have kind of formed own path—short-cuts and such—and those places really don't follow the lights," she says. City staffers have put out a Request for Proposals for new, better lighting, with a projected tentative award date set for January 7.
"We could build on the existing infrastructure. With some of the newer lights, like the ones near the skatepark, they're just a lot more effective," she says. "The goal is to make people feel safe on the Common at all times of the day, and those lights are a short term thing that we can do right now."
Amen! Let there be light! Happy Holidays!
