After a flurry of enforcement activity by police and bylaw officers, the traffic situation around Burnaby’s Sperling Elementary School is back to being just as bad as it ever was, according to a parent who took her concerns to the city two months ago.
Parents Jenny Yamagata and Andreja Kovacevic-Cikes told the city’s traffic safety committee in November that pickup and drop-off at the school are “chaos,” and they warned of “big, immediate safety concerns.”
“I cannot tell you the number of people, including city workers, bus drivers, truckers and parents who recklessly speed through the neighbourhood, use neighbours’ driveways and teachers’ parking lots to do turnarounds or brazenly pull illegal U-turns right in front of the ‘no U-turns’ sign,” Yamagata told the committee. “It gives me great anxiety thinking that my, or any child for that matter, might be struck by an impatient motorist.”
Design problem
The two moms presented a slide show, including photos of kids darting from cars on crowded streets, ambiguous signage and families walking on the road because there are no sidewalks by the school on Hycrest Drive.
“There’s lots of vehicles, lots of traffic; there’s no curbs, no sidewalks. There’s a lot of chaos every morning and every afternoon,” Kovacevic-Cikes said.
She noted Sperling is a French immersion school with more students coming from farther away, which means more vehicle traffic during drop-off and pickup.
Yamagata and Kovacevic-Cikes recommended numerous measures to improve the situation, from putting up less ambiguous street signs and painting the speed limit on the street, to bigger changes, like a raised crosswalk with flashing lights across Sperling at Hycrest, making Adair a one-way street or carving a one-way drop-off area out of a forested area on the school property.
When traffic committee member Lindy McQueen heard the descriptions of some of the Sperling parents’ driving behaviour, she said those parents ought to be held responsible for the situation instead of “all the blame” being put on the city, RCMP and bylaw officers.
“Parents have to take some responsibility to look and be safe with their children,” she said. “I’d go out and take stickers and slam them on their cars or do something. Get their attention.”
“I’d be happy to get a paintball gun out if you think that would work,” Yamagata said.
“I’ll be there,” McQueen said.
But Moreno Zanotto, with cycling advocacy group HUB Cycling, said the issues are a design problem.
“We get behaviour that matches the design of the streets around the school, and, until we address that design problem, we’re not going to get a change in behaviour,” he said.
By the end of the committee meeting, the whole Sperling Elementary traffic issue had been referred to staff for a report.
But that hasn’t led to a lot of improvement so far, according to Yamagata.
'Comprehensive' review
In a recent interview, she said there was a flurry of RCMP and bylaw enforcement activity after the meeting, which improved the situation for a time before the Christmas break.
The city has also made some “very minor” changes to signage around the school, according to Yamagata.
Since school started up again after the winter break, however, she says she’s still seeing illegal U-turns, speeding and people parking where they shouldn’t.
Yamagata said “not enough” has been done to address the bigger design problems around the school.
“Until we do see those changes, you won’t see the change in the behaviour,” she said.
But solutions may be on the horizon, according to the city.
The NOW has learned the city is in the process of hiring a consultant and hopes to complete a “comprehensive traffic and safety review” for every elementary school in the city by the end of the year.
“Through this proactive approach, we will be looking at all schools to ensure the measures we implement are consistent across the city,” said Amy Choh, Burnaby’s assistant director of engineering for transportation.
Choh said the city gets a lot of inquiries from parents who, like Yamagata and Kovacevic-Cikes, are concerned about traffic safety at schools.
“This study is about being proactive and consistent,” Choh said in an emailed statement.
The city didn’t provide a lot of details about the plan beyond the fact staff hope to have the review complete by the end of the year.
For Sperling parents specifically, however, the city is already taking steps that will address some of the problems highlighted in Yamagata and Kovacevic-Cikes's presentation, according to communications manager Chris Bryan.
He said a sidewalk for Hycrest will be designed and go out for consultation this year and should be installed in 2023.
And preliminary recommendations from the city’s Sperling-Duthie traffic calming study, launched in October, also include measures engineers think will improve the situation around the school, including a raised crosswalk with curb extensions on Sperling Avenue at Adair Street, speed reader boards on Sperling Avenue and a marked crosswalk on Sperling Avenue at Hycrest Drive.
Final recommendations from the study are expected early this year.
(This story has been corrected. The original said Adair Street doesn't have sidewalks, but the street does have raised sidewalks on both sides. Hycrest Drive is the only street by the school that doesn't have sidewalks. We regret the error.)
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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