The Editor:
I live in the Edmonds neighbourhood, and often tell people that one of my favourite attributes of where I live is its walkability.
Nearly everything I need is a five-to-10 minute walk away. This is certainly true, but, in recent years, I've begun to wonder whether it is a truly a pedestrian-safe neighbourhood.
Let me provide some examples:
Every school day, we walk my daughter to Edmonds Community School.
We live near a three-way stop sign that is rarely adhered to by drivers. You'll be lucky to see a driver do more than a rolling stop, and in many cases I've had to restrain my kids from entering the intersection because it was obvious the driver was unaware or unwilling to stop.
We live near Edmonds Community Centre and frequently take our kids to the playground and swimming pool.
We find that, regardless of time of day, visibility, or what colour clothing we are wearing, we are unlikely to get the first, second, sometimes even third vehicle to stop for us at the crosswalk. We've now resorted to attaching flashing lights to our kids' bikes, but even that has proven unreliable.
And finally, after dropping off the kids on Tuesday, Dec. 20, I was legally crossing a crosswalk next to a roundabout and was honked at by a driver who presumably thought that getting their child to school on time (they were already late) was more important than pedestrian safety and rules of the road.
I could go on with many, many other examples. My point in all this is that for a community that takes pride in its walkability, it feels to me as though cars are still priority.
The safety of me and my family is secondary to the needs of a commuter hurrying to work, a parent getting their child to school on time, etc.
I wish I had a solution, but admittedly this goes above my pay grade.
More enforcement of stop signs and crosswalks? More driver education on rules of the road? More speedbumps and traffic slowing measures? I don't know.
All I can say is that the benefits of having amenities in your neighbourhood are negated when pedestrians cannot safely walk to them.
And more needs to be done to address this in Edmonds, and likely elsewhere in our city.
- Daniel Stewart, Burnaby
