It’s been an eventful few weeks for Steve MacKay, the “raccoon” who helped slow down traffic on a stretch of Robie Street plagued by car crashes. In May, the city announced it would install new all-way stop signs and painted crosswalks at the Robie/Stairs, Robie/Stanley and Robie/Columbus intersections, after years of being pestered. And MacKay, who led two guerilla street calming protests, organized a petition and documented two dozen vehicle accidents in the area, has become known as a street safety hero since he last spoke to The Coast.
MacKay gets recognized by strangers now. “They'll be like, ‘Oh hey, Steve, good job on the crosswalks,” he says. “I mean, it's kind of neat that people recognize me and the work that I've been doing on the street, but it's also kind of weird.” And in a true initiation for the Halifamous, the bard of Halifax Twitter, Adam Faber, wrote a song about MacKay to the tune of “Holding out for a Hero” (“He’s gotta be quick and he’s gotta be masked so he can paint those crosswalks at night”).
Halifax’s Hero, @Seebo429 https://t.co/ZFk5gxvUMe pic.twitter.com/HK84qLpZGg
— Loud AF (@AdamNFaber) May 21, 2022
The city originally said the new infrastructure would be completed by mid-summer. But the all-way stop signs went up at the intersections of Robie and Stairs and Robie and Columbus last Friday, and crosswalks were painted at those intersections as well as Robie and Stanley Street, where MacKay painted his DIY crosswalk in May, on Sunday. “It was great,” he says, “the neighbourhood’s happy with this.” The city workers painting the crosswalks were quite popular. MacKay brought them snacks and a thank-you card.
On Friday afternoon, MacKay and his wife brought deck chairs out to the sidewalk and sat to watch the new stop signs in action. “It was wild. So many cars weren't stopping,” he says. He attributes this to a lack of awareness about the new signs– drivers on “autopilot.” And one of the signs on Columbus is obscured by a tree, so MacKay cut away some branches and added a neon flag on Monday.
I made a couple of minor improvements for the stop signs last night pic.twitter.com/oRgreRiC14
— Raccoon at home (@Seebo429) May 30, 2022
Yet the painted stop bars and crosswalks are making a real difference. MacKay says the streets have been much calmer since Sunday. The Coast paid a visit to the new crosswalks on Tuesday, and we can attest: cars are actually stopping now.
MacKay’s next-door neighbour Bob has been fighting for change in the area for over 30 years, and was always told there was nothing to do. The sound of a car crash is “a sound you don’t forget once you hear it,” he says. It “felt great” to finally see something done. “I noticed a difference right away.”
MacKay wants to host a neighborhood barbeque to celebrate the new stop signs and crosswalks. “Just to thank everybody, because I couldn't have done it without the whole neighborhood getting behind it.”
The city prioritized the new measures as “an immediate first step” because of safety issues in the area, says a spokesperson for the municipality in an email. Staff are also “investigating the potential for physical traffic calming measures” in the corridor, which “will require some design work, so there is no definite timeline for installation.”
