A road safety plan that would remove one of two northbound vehicle lanes on Mountain Highway will not roll ahead.
At a special meeting on Monday, District of North Vancouver council unanimously rejected a staff-recommended proposal that would add infrastructure upgrades along the busy roadway between East 18th and East 27th streets.
The suggested changes included adding curb extensions and left-turn pockets, while adding buffered cycling lanes with the remaining road space, according to a staff report.
But after the plan was shared online earlier this month, it garnered significant blowback, with a change.org petition attracting 1,200 signatures by the council meeting.
At the start of the meeting, several members of the public spoke against the plan, stating that removing a lane on the arterial road would worsen congestion in the area, and could block important vehicles like buses and ambulances.
Some spoke in favour of the proposal, citing dangerous cycling conditions along the route, and that the exposed sidewalks and intersections aren’t safe, especially for children living in the area.
During a presentation at council, staff said the changes were based on two rounds of community engagement, and that council’s decision should be made soon to align with scheduled paving along the corridor.
Mayor wants to see safety upgrades without losing lane
Referring to the conflict between motorists and other road users, Coun. Lisa Muri said she hates that it’s always one or the other.
“I hate that we are always trying to take away from one to help another,” she said. “We are becoming more divisive in our community with some of the decisions that we’re making as a municipality, and I feel very uncomfortable with that.”
“To take out a major arterial [route] in a community that has a minimum of 1,500 cars coming to it, based on five significant developments that we know about right now, I think, is putting the cart before the horse,” Muri said.
She also questioned the validity of surveys as a way for staff to gather feedback from the community.
“I find surveys to be challenging and that people feel awkward in even answering the questions, because it makes them feel like they’re being led down another path, and they have become apprehensive about it,” Muri said.
Coun. Betty Forbes said the district doesn’t need to go for the “gold standard” of road safety right away, and lose a lane of traffic on an already congested street.
“It’s already backed up,” she said. “So maybe let’s go for the safety standards which are what everybody in this room wants.
“Some of those might be that we fix the crosswalks. We do something that makes them more noticeable, stand out, make them safer,” Forbes said.
Other improvements she suggested were fixing the sidewalks, which are in “terrible” condition, and getting residents along the street to trim their hedges.
“There’s a lot of those littler things that aren’t going to cost a lot of money, but might get a big bang for the dollar,” she said.
Mayor Mike Little said the district isn’t ready for a traffic lane to be reallocated in this area, but that he was sensitive to comments about the experience around Eastview Elementary, which has its drop off area on 18th Street just off Mountain Highway.
“I would like to see staff come back with something that takes into account the sidewalk resurfacing, the clearing of the sight lines, and making sure that – where we reasonably can, north and south – we can do bump outs to narrow a lane without loss of traffic on Mountain Highway proper,” he said.
Little said that there’s a culture problem that people are poor judges of risk in spaces around kids.
“As a parent, I have very big concerns about us not addressing that within the immediate area around an elementary school,” he said.
Gathering that there wasn’t much support for the current proposal, Little made a new motion to reject it, and that it be sent back to staff to report back with other options for the section of road. That passed unanimously.
Staff said they would report back to council with options early in the new year.
