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When Halifax police released their latest annual report on pedestrian and vehicle collisions last month, the headlines focused on one number: the 55 percent jump in accidents since last year. Whether or not you consider that 55 percent increase a frightening trend, or simply attribute it to more reports being made by frightened pedestrians, ultimately it’s not the number we should focus on.
The most important number in the 2014 pedestrian collision stats is four, because that’s the number of people who were accidentally killed while walking on Halifax’s streets. The next most important is 39, the number of people moderately-to-seriously injured while walking, also by accident.
The lion’s share of the discussion around these accidents has been about who’s at fault—generally either the pedestrian or the driver. But a growing number of voices are looking beyond the human factor, and asking what we can do to design our cities to be safer for walking. With that in mind, The Coast presents an introductory guide to making Halifax pedestrian-friendly.
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We need a walkers’ advocacy group
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Bill Campbell started getting interested in walkable neighbourhoods after participating in a pop-up park at Queen and Morris during the 100 in 1 Day festival last summer. These days, he’s working on the formation of Walk Halifax, a new citizens’ advocacy group for the needs of pedestrians.
“The big picture is every pedestrian route is safe, comfortable and interesting,” says Campbell. The group has yet to have its first formation meeting, scheduled for March. “There’s this vast amount of real estate that lies between buildings—the street and the sidewalk. There has to be more attention to the needs of the pedestrian in that public realm.” Walk Halifax will work with municipal and provincial bureaucrats and politicians to “put a pedestrian lens” on their work. “When they’re building something, looking at a regulation, changing a law, or reviewing something, I just don’t think that’s in the forefront of their minds right now,” says Campbell.
Once formed, Walk Halifax will fill a gaping hole in transportation advocacy in the city, taking a seat alongside groups like It’s More Than Buses, and the Halifax Cycling Coalition.
Move over, cars: make room for pedestrians
It’s been a rough year for walking on city sidewalks. First, a busy construction season in the summer and fall closed off a staggering number of downtown main streets. Now, icy conditions make many paths virtually non-passable.
If you’ve driven down Quinpool Road lately you may have noticed that the street has lost a couple feet on either side to snowbanks, but still manages to accommodate the same number of traffic lanes.
“There’s so much excess road width in the city,” says Halifax’s first (and former) chief urban designer, Andy Fillmore. And we may need to transfer some of that space over to sidewalks, particularly on our busiest corridors. “The busier the street, the more sidewalk you should have,” says Fillmore.
Fillmore isn’t alone in his opinions. Mark Nener is a community planner with the Dalhousie-affiliated Cities and Environment Unit. He offer up Spring Garden Road as an example of a sidewalk space in desperate need of widening and redesign. The street “just needs more space,” says Nener, “and a better-quality pedestrian environment.” He’s a fan of the space surrounding the new Central Library. “There’s a precedent there for quality of infrastructure.”
Several years ago there was a plan to realign sidewalks on Spring Garden, moving some loading and parking off the main drag. “The merchants actually rebelled against it,” says Fillmore. “In the end, council lost confidence that it was what the community wanted. And unfortunately the money was diverted
elsewhere.”
Nener has hope now for Argyle Street, which has a 2012 streetscape plan (spearheaded by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission) calling for limited car access and much more pedestrian space on the patio-laden street. When convention centre construction wraps up, says Nener, there will “a huge opportunity to implement that plan.”
Of course, years ago business owners put the kibosh on a pilot project in a similar vein, proposing to close Argyle to vehicles on Friday nights and weekends. “It came undone about one minute before it was about to happen,” says Fillmore, “because of one of the businesses on the street determined it would be detrimental.” The city, says Fillmore, chose to put the concerns of business owners ahead of the general good. “It’s just an indication that we haven’t embraced a progressive philosophy yet. We’re still sort of thinking about this in old-fashioned terms.”
Create a hierarchy of modes
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This is actually less about creating a hierarchy than about turning the current hierarchy on its head. Since World War II, North American cities have been built for cars, and Halifax is no different. But these days, some cities are choosing to do it differently.
Andy Fillmore points to the Vancouver example. According to its 2012 transportation plan, Vancouver’s transportation decisions all reflect a “hierarchy of modes” with walking at the top of the list, followed by cycling, transit, taxi/commercial transit/shared vehicles and lastly, private automobiles.
“That philosophy is important,” says Fillmore, “because that starts to guide you in concrete decision-making around infrastructure.” When Vancouver’s technocrats are considering “whether to widen the road or what the radius of the turn should be,” says Fillmore, “they say, ‘OK, first, what’s best for pedestrians?’”
In Halifax, on the other hand, we work under a regional plan with underlying assumptions that prioritize the convenience of vehicle traffic.
“There’s this assumption that we’re not willing to accommodate any increased congestion,” says Mark Nener.
“If an intersection treatment for bikes or pedestrians proposes the removal of a right-turn lane,” he says, “and the traffic and right-of-way people decide that the decrease in vehicle capacity is unacceptable, then they will not allow that treatment.”
One pedestrian death is too many
It’s all the rage among North American cities lately: Vision Zero. Originating in Sweden, where it’s national policy and a way of life, Vision Zero aims to completely eliminate deaths and serious injuries caused by traffic accidents.
As a goal, it’s radical, especially in a world dominated by the cost-benefit analysis, where four tragic deaths in a Halifax year can get rationalized as the cost of modern life. But there’s more to Vision Zero than zero.
Vision Zero expands the responsibility for these collisions beyond the walkers and drivers directly involved, to include the regulators and designers of our roadways and sidewalks. And it shifts the focus away from all accidents to those that hurt or kill us (or those where we hurt or kill others).
Seen through the lens of Vision Zero, Halifax’s biggest problem is not the 269 pedestrian-car collisions that were reported last year. Instead, it’s the four deaths and 39 moderate-to-serious injuries that resulted from those accidents. Vision Zero recognizes human error as inevitable, and so aims not only to reduce the chances of accidents in general, but also limit the damage they can do.
Mark more crosswalks, and mark them properly
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We all know (don’t we?) that every intersection is a legal pedestrian crosswalk. Or actually, four of them. But we forget this because very few of them are actually marked.
Downtown councillor Waye Mason is campaigning now for zebra stripes across Quinpool at Monastery Lane. He’d also like to see markings across Sackville Street at the pedestrian-heavy Argyle, and a doubling up of stripes across Barrington at George. His pet peeves about “Halifax’s traffic orthodoxy” include the propensity to only paint stripes on one side of an intersection.
“Tourists are forever coming up George Street and crossing into Parade Square,” says Mason, “and we only have a crosswalk on the south side of George. The traffic engineers are trying to force the behaviour of the pedestrian to not cross on both sides, but people cross anyway because they know it’s a crosswalk even though it’s unmarked.”
Halifax’s take on crosswalk markings seems to be that their power to stop cars somehow depends on their scarcity. “To over-saturate the streets with crosswalk markings would reduce their significance greatly,” says Halifax’s traffic and right-of-way services website.
The argument for more crosswalk markings is, of course, the opposite. Mason notes than an early draft of HRM By Design asked for zebra-striping in all downtown intersections, to mark downtown as a pedestrian-focused place. But the traffic authority of the day said no.
According to Halifax’s policy, fast traffic can actually work against the possibility of getting a crosswalk marked, because “pedestrian safety may be compromised.” Presumably that’s because markings encourage more pedestrians to cross.
Norm Collins is Halifax’s most vocal pedestrian safety advocate. He became known for the crosswalk flags he set up along Waverley Road, where traffic moves fast and there are no sidewalks but people still need to cross the street.
Collins is a proponent of better markings on crosswalks (he likes the idea of reflective tape on crosswalk poles, because of the visibility bang for the buck) and also of more marked crosswalks.
Collins says he’s often reminded by his wife that “the vast majority don’t understand that’s a crosswalk, and that I have a legal right to cross and they have a legal obligation to yield.
“And I kind of accept that. But I say, if you’re going to take away the unmarked crosswalks as being legal, in exchange I would expect there to be a marked crosswalk, say, every 300 metres. So you’d never have to walk more than 150 metres in either direction to cross the street.”
By way of example Collins offers up Baker Drive in Dartmouth, which features a two-kilometre stretch of road without a single marked crosswalk. “It’s very busy and there’re apartments along there,” he says. “I think it’s just awful.”
Let’s slow down the speed limit
If you accept the Vision Zero-inspired attitude that we need to focus on reducing our chances of getting killed and hurt (or killing and hurting others) when accidents occur, then speed becomes a key factor in the
solution.
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According to a report by the World Health Organization, pedestrians have a 90 percent chance of survival when struck by a car travelling at 30 kilometres per hour or less. But if that same car goes 45kph, the chance of survival goes down to 50 percent. And it gets worse outside the urban core, where cars go faster. Pedestrians have almost no chance of surviving an impact with a car going 80kph, according to the WHO report.
If the Nova Scotia government were to change urban speed limits, we would be the first province in Canada to do so. Though we’d have to hurry to beat Ontario, which just began consultations on the possibility.
Of course, changing the speed limit is only part of the battle when it comes to slowing cars down. Norm Collins thinks more speed humps may be necessary to actually reduce car speeds. “They are effective,” says Collins. “As a driver, I slow down.”
And a basic design factor like street width can play a role in speed. “People generally drive as fast as they feel comfortable driving,” says Mark Nener. “The wider the space the faster they go.”
“Part of the whole issue is whether the balance between drivers and pedestrians is at the right point,” says Collins. “If we’re going to make the world safer for pedestrians, and if we’re going to not accept the number of collisions and injuries, then drivers are going to have to give a little bit.”
Intersections need bigger bump-outs
The bump-out (AKA neckdown or curb extension) is an extension of the sidewalk at an intersection which is becoming a favoured improvement among new urbanists. “It makes pedestrians more visible,” says Bill Campbell. “It tends to slow traffic at intersections. It shortens the distance the pedestrian has to cross, and provides safe refuge.” Bump outs also have the benefit of letting pedestrians see past parked cars and snowbanks, without stepping out into traffic. For clues as to where bump-outs might work, check out the sneckdowns in your neighbourhood. Coined by New York videographer Clarence Eckerson when he noticed the many “snowy neckdowns” created every winter, Halifax sneckdowns are being documented by Blair Barrington at sneckdownhalifax.tumblr.com.
Burn the books on roadway standards
There’s a tectonic shift happening in the city building professions, says Andy Fillmore. “For a very long period of time, the whole business was run by engineers.”
These days, more and more, it’s the planners and urban designers who are leading, he says.
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However, we still rely on “volumes and volumes of land use bylaws and roadway design manuals” left over from the urban renewal period. That period, which saw the construction of the Cogswell Interchange and the razing of Africville, is what Fillmore calls “a discredited era of city-building.” These guidelines, says Fillmore, “encode that 1960s vision of the city as a machine for moving cars.”
This is perhaps why at a meeting of the Council for Canadian Urbanism, former Vancouver chief planner Larry Beasley suggested planners across the country hold a ritual burning of all roadway design guidelines.
Of course we need to build our streets and sidewalks to some sort of standard, and lo and behold, there is an alternative on the rise. The National Association of City Transportation Officials has published its Urban Street Design Guidelines. The NACTO guidelines promise “a blueprint for designing 21st century streets,” and include tools like pinchpoints and chicanes that serve to both increase public pedestrian space and reduce traffic speeds.
Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are members of NACTO, though the group has plenty of affiliate members on a smaller scale as well. Halifax staff have yet to do a full assessment of NACTO, says spokesperson Tiffany Chase. So it seems like any ritual burnings of our current street guidelines may be a ways off.
Related Stories
Sidewalk conditions remain icy, dangerous and unacceptable
Crosswalk signals are pushing all the wrong buttons
Here’s the guy who keeps hitting pedestrians
Mayor Mike Savage owes all of us an apology
The safety dance: Crosswalk safety still sadly up to pedestrians
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2015.
When I visited Hawaii a while ago their pedestrian crossing has a HUGE sign on the road as you approached, not just the zebra style marked cross walk. It looked something like this:
Ignore the periods, the format got messed up if i just used spaces.
|……………….|
|……………….|
|.. PED……….|
|…..X…………|
|……………….|
| | | | |.. |.. || – Cross walk
|……………….|
|…………..X…|
|………….PED.|
Obviously the PED would be facing the correct way so the driver would read it properly.
So as you were approaching the cross walk you had plenty of warning if you were concentrating on the road and not looking for the signs on the side of the road. Seems like a good idea.
I’m also a fan of dedicating streets downtown for walking/biking only.
Amsterdam uses the hierarchy of modes model and it works well. It’s employed with dedicated lanes. When I arrive, I always have to walk from the taxi’s closest point to my hotel because it’s on a pedestrian-only street (along with 6 other hotels).
Ottawa uses this model as well. Buses have dedicated roads (shared with emergency vehicles only) and lanes. A trip the length of Scotia Square to Bayer’s Lake would take 10 minutes in Ottawa; here it takes over 45 minutes.
Let’s stop kowtowing to vehicles, thus killing old ladies.
Just get on with it Halifax! Pedestrians are citizens! We are all pedestrians.
This makes us seem so backwards.
Great ideas, I just hope our car-dominated mentality city accepts some or all of the proposals. Why would the businessses on Argyle think that blocking off the street to cars would HURT their bottom line? Bring people out, walking around, etc and I think they would get far more business (bigger patio = more patrons). Farnham Gate is a perfect example of how NOT to do urban planning. You have a 2 km or whatever stretch of street, with mostly apartments/townhomes with parking lots. You have bus stops on each side of the street but only one crosswalk, in the middle of the street (between Parkland and Dunbrack). People speed down Farnham (I’m pretty sure its 50km) yet you have a constant flow of people jaywalking to get to their bus (I do it, the bus stop is 20 feet away from my front door; I’m not walking 50 feet to the crosswalk, then another 50 feet back to the bus stop) and cars coming out (slowly) of the parking lots. Meanwhile cars are treating it like it’s the Indy….add in the current snow banks and you have a mess….I’ve lived on Farnham for 2.5 years, and there’s been quite a few accidents, usually rear enders because someone comes around a curve too fast and there’s someone pulling out of a parking lot or someone crossing at the crosswalk. If we expect Halifax to grow (and most people do) we have to acknowledge the streets aren’t gonna get any wider, the only solution to traffic congestion is to reduce the amount of drivers, i.e. using public transit, pedestrians, etc.
Oh…and let’s change the mentality of some car owners that think people that walk or take the bus are poor and somehow ‘less’ worthy than drivers. There should be more pride of busing to work, biking, etc.
Junebug is so right and there are many more streets like Farnham Gate area such as Larry Uteck in Hfx and Baker Dr. in Dartmouth etc. Big apartment complexes across from each other but no real sense of a community, other than a racing strip in between the buildings.
I’ve had more than one vehicle rev their engine while waiting for me to cross at a pedestrian crossing, and plenty more simply pass right on through because I’m not yet at their side of the street. On slippery ice. What’s infuriating about it is clearly 40 feet down Connaught the traffic is backed up for blocks. I don’t understand the rush just to wait behind more vehicles. I’ve never had such rude, intimidating attitudes from drivers in other cities. Halifax really should be embarrassed.
I believe cities need to have a sense of community or they are doomed (more crime, etc). Places like the North End have that, as they are mostly houses but how do we accomplish this with apartments/ high density housing? Well, one way is do build ‘inner courtyards’ where the residents can BBQ (especially if no balcony’s) on the weekends and streets in the neigborhood that can host block parties and close down to cars for a day a month in the summer. Keeping local coffee shops, restaurants, etc in the ‘hood so people don’t need to leave their area to dine, etc. Creating suburbs that have kilometres between neighbors where the drivers speed through other neighborhoods to get to work are going in the opposite direction. We can’t just hand developers the keys and say ‘here you go’. Any new development must have an impact study done, and somehow incorporate community into the plan.
As a big, bad car driver, I have to say that I completely disagree with the idea of reducing speed limits. I reject the assertion that streets should be made safer and in fact believe the opposite. Do you want to know what I’m doing when I’m in a dangerous situation? I’m trying to soak it all in with all my senses and pay close attention to my environment. When I perceive little or no risk, I get lazy and allow myself to get distracted. The roadway is always potentially lethal yet just today I (again) saw a woman emerge from behind a snowbank, face planted firmly in her phone not looking to see if perhaps a car might be blasting through the intersection. Putting round corners on every sharp edge is not a realistic way to solve this problem.
Well, stop perceiving and you won’t have the problem a of dealing with stupid people. But may I remind you – as a big, bad car driver septimus – the problem a of dealing with stupid people is YOUR responsibility under the law.
I know, I know… you spent $25,000 on the vehicle. It costs $600/year for upkeep and maintenance; another $800-$1,000/year for insurance; gas is crazy-pricey and godonlyknowswhatyouspentongas/year. Given that, you experience a grandiose sense of entitlement which blinds you to the fact pedestrians exist. You LOVE Bayers Lake and Dartmouth Crossing.
Sorry septimus, you’re on the losing team…
Hing Frogg, maybe in your tiny black and white world it is impossible for hold two different points of view at the same time but some of us have actually become pretty good at it. For example, I love cars AND I love bicycles and sometimes I pick the bike over the car! If that hasn’t completely blown your mind, I think Halifax drivers are amongst the worst I’ve ever seen AND I think that pedestrians are often at fault during a lot of collisions. And would you believe that I do most of my shopping downtown but sometimes I do go to Bayer’s Lake? I am a big believer in buying local but once or twice a year I go to Costco.
At any rate, your ESP skills are a little off because I only drive beaters so that I can afford fun things like cool bikes.
You still have gas, upkeep/maintenance, insurance costs AND a grandiose sense of entitlement to the road, right?
I know, it’s hard when things change but look at the bright side: once you’re squeezed out, you can buy some fancy tassels for your bike!
A change is needed to be made on both sides in order for Halifax to achieve a suitable environment for pedestrians. The majority of Halifax’s demographic is made up of seniors and students which means there will be a lot of pedestrians walking around the streets, and I don’t see this pattern changing any time soon. Everything in downtown Halifax is within walkable distance so it would make sense to widen pedestrian sidewalks and make pedestrians a priority when planning future landscapes. At the same time, space is needed for cars so that they can be moved away from crowded places. There needs to be more parking grounds in downtown Halifax so that people do not need to park their cars along sidewalks where space is needed for people to walk. Once the cars are out, any number of space could be dedicated for pedestrians.
And while we’re at it, why not clean up the snow from the streets so that space won’t be a problem for both pedestrians and cars trying to park?
@Tao Wang. I agree with everything you said, but have to quibble with “the majority of Halifax’s demographic is made up of seniors and students.”
That’s actually not true. The proportion of seniors in Halifax is actually just slightly BELOW the Canadian average (despite the fact that literally every Haligonian seems to confuse Halifax with the rest of Nova Scotia, and believes we’re full of elderly folks).
And there are definitely a lot of students, but the majority of Halifax’s population is actually in the 25-55 age bracket, same as most cities in Canada.
“Sorry septimus, you’re on the losing team…”
I don’t think there are any “teams” in this. Most car drivers are pedestrians at some point, and even the most hardcore pedestrians use or benefit from cars to some degree. Making this about teams and us vs. them is totally unproductive. And before you dump on me, I don’t own a car and probably do 95% of my trips (numbers wise, not distance wise) on foot.
The point that needs driving home is that good design and a rethinking of how we do infrastructure has the potential to make everyone win. The goal is not to make anyone lose.
London England has half of the signage that Toronto has, and half of the accidents. People give up “environment awareness” for the false security of having instructions. We have taken something very dangerous and made it very easy.
Tom Barkhouse: The City of London has a big daily tax on incoming cars (over $20.00) as well as a variety of automatic systems for controlling traffic (rising bollards for example). They’ve solved the pedestrian-commuter “problem” by making it expensive and onerous for people to drive within the city, not with “awareness”.
This only works because the City has a good transit system and it’s not wholly necessary to pass through downtown anyway.
I’m not really sure how this is even happening but there’s way more to this than what we’re reading.
I’ve lived in Halifax more than 20 years and the last couple of years have been the worst for pedestrian / vehicle “accidents”. I don’t like to use the word accident because nothing is. It’s pure physics. For ever action there’s a reaction.
Everyone is distracted these day. Both drivers and pedestrian. I drive to and from work daily. I live in Clayton park and go downtown once in a while so I find a decent parking spot and leave my car there all day on weekend while walking around or doing what I need to do.
Here’s my experience as a pedestrian.
I have had the odd instance where I had to avoid a driver not paying attention. Was I hit by a car. No because I look both ways before I cross the street and always make sure traffic has stopped on both sides of the street before I even step onto the pavement.
This is my encounter as a driver.
Living in clayton park and commuting around by car, it has come to my attention that for some reason people are starting to prefer to walk on the pavement in the summer rather than the fully available sidewalk! Why?! This is how people get hit. I saw that on many occasions! There’s a sidewalk, use it!
I have always walked around Halifax and never have I felt unsafe or in danger by walking our sidewalks and not streets.
I had to slam on my brakes many many times to avoid hitting someone because they darted across the street without looking or without properly using a flashing crosswalk!
It’s there for a reason, use it!
If I also me remind readers of the 2 sad incidents that took place in downtown Halifax and Dartmouth.
The Halifax one where a university student was killed by the “BACK” tires of a dump truck turning at an intersection. HOW DO YOU WALK INTO THE REAR HALF OF A TRUCK??
Well it’s obvious that she wasn’t looking. Distracted by most likely her phone.
The same thing in Dartmouth, where the girl was also killed by the rare tires of, not even a dump truck this time, an actual 18 wheeler!
These are only 2 of many incidents that happen.
I’ve travelled a lot and have driven in many places around the world. I have come to the conclusion, based on my experience, that Nova Scotia is one of the worst and most dangerous places to drive. Discovery’s Canada’s Worst Driver will attest to that.
Drivers here don’t pay attention. They’re very slow to react and hald the time they don’t know where they’re going. Plan your route ahead of time. Know your place of residence.
Obay street signs. For God’s sake use your brain! Driving is common sense and situational awareness! Goodness how many people I caught texting while driving or just being distracted in general! Why are you such bad drivers?
So regardless of how you design a city or how many “pedestrian friendly”, which really should be pedestrian only for this to work, streets you have, it’s the culture that needs to change. The “I’m invincible” culture that has a grip on the residents.
I’ll leave you with this last 2 experiences.
1) Driving along one of the Dartmouth streets, on a busy day, I came across this mature mother holding her child’s hand and running across the busy street, setting a bad example for her child, when there was a crosswalk probably 3 meters away from her. One of those cross walks with the red visible flags!
2) Driving back from Cape Breton this past August, Highway 104 remains single lane between Antigonish and just before New Glasgow. Throughout the drive what do I witness, a mother driving a sedan with a child in the back, passing and coming very close to head on collision, on a double yellow line, not even dashed line!
This is why people die.