'Moving us backwards': What's Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver's track record on road safety?
With Vancouver’s municipal election now less than two months away, a road safety group has accused Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party of “creating moral panics” about public safety, while not prioritizing road safety.
Vision Zero Vancouver, a group that advocates for safer roads, recently published a video and blog post, stating that in the four years Sim and ABC have been in power, “they’ve actually made our streets more dangerous.”
They noted several actions that happened in City Council in the past four years, including reducing speeds on Cornwall Avenue to 40 km/hr instead of 30 km/hr, rejecting protected bike lanes on Broadway, and passing a budget that resulted in lay-offs among the City’s transportation staff.
“[Road safety changes] require a bit of political courage, and they’ve shown — ABC and Ken Sim — that they don’t have that courage,” said Mihai Cirstea, a volunteer with Vision Zero Vancouver, in an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized. “They’d rather go after sort of hot-button public drug use issues.”
For example, the ABC Vancouver majority on Vancouver City Council formally approved Mayor Sim’s public safety plebiscite earlier this month, which will ask Vancouver voters to weigh in on public hard drug use and establishing a major mental health and addictions treatment facility on voting day. Further, Sim advocated for the B.C. government to cancel a proposed overdose prevention site in Downtown Vancouver.
Vision Zero Vancouver added that in the lead-up to the 2022 election, ABC and VPD worked together — pointing out the unprecedented move where the Vancouver Police Union endorsed Sim and the ABC party, stating that “public safety is the number one issue in this year’s civic election.”
The citizen advocacy group said that the VPD “went on a media blitz to create a panic,” putting out 52 news releases, while Sim and the ABC put public safety at the centre of their campaign, promising to hire 100 new police officers.
ABC, throughout the 2022 election campaign, cited that stranger attacks were 4.5 per day, when it later came out that they had dropped to 1.8 stranger attacks per day in the first half of 2022.
Daily Hive Urbanized asked ABC about this, and the mayor said in a statement that “the statistic used during the 2022 election was the most up-to-date data point at the time.”
Since Sim and the ABC have been elected, City Council has increased the VPD’s budget, including an additional $46.2 million for 2026, even while other departments faced cutbacks.
“Over the last four years, ABC has made public safety the number one priority of our administration at City Hall. We’ve fully funded the VPD, VFRS [Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services], and all mental health workers requested by Vancouver Coastal Health,” Sim said in a statement sent to Daily Hive Urbanized.
Is the pattern repeating in 2026?
With the 2026 municipal election fast approaching, Cirstea said that Vision Zero Vancouver recalled “how closely the VPD and Ken Sim and ABC worked together” during the last election.
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“We’re keen to see if the pattern is repeating, and it seems like it is,” he told Daily Hive.
He said if you look at Sim or ABC’s social media, “all they talk about is public safety.”
ABC told Daily Hive Urbanized that they are “not working with the VPD on election matters.” Meanwhile, the VPD said that they “are not going to comment on the claims made in the post” from Vision Zero Vancouver.
“The VPD’s focus is on enhancing the safety and security of Vancouver, its residents, businesses, and visitors,” a VPD spokesperson said.
What about road safety?
Cirstea said that despite ABC’s focus on public safety, “they have, for four years, completely ignored the number one cause of preventable death and injury in Vancouver, which is car crashes. Not just ignored it, that’d be one thing. But they’ve actually made it worse. They’ve had policies that have actively taken us backwards.”
According to Vision Zero Vancouver, the highest number of preventable injuries and deaths is from vehicle crashes, with 20.6 Vancouverites injured each day.
“Ken Sim’s ripping out bike lanes, cancelling projects for future bike lanes, refusing to lower speed limits on dangerous streets, even though staff has strongly recommended it,” said Cirstea. “Basically, moving us backwards.”
In 2025, the number of pedestrian fatalities was the highest since 2021, with 13 people killed on Vancouver roads, not including the 11 others who lost their lives in the Lapu Lapu tragedy.
But ABC Vancouver Councillor Lisa Dominato strongly rejected these assertions from Vision Zero Vancouver.
“ABC Vancouver has made it very clear that pedestrian and cyclist safety is a top priority in the city, and that is really reflected in our actions over the last four years,” she said in an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized.
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Dominato said that City Council nearly doubled investments in transportation safety from $5.5 million to $10.5 million when updating the midterm capital plan. This included a 50 per cent increase in installing both flashing beacons and pedestrian signals, as well as increasing leading pedestrian intervals (where pedestrians can cross the street a few seconds before drivers have the green light, improving their visibility to vehicles before they can turn left or right). The City also approved 30 km/hr on all local streets, which are the streets without a yellow dividing line.
Dominato added that City Council passed the Vision Zero action plan, which has the goal of reaching zero traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries by 2050. (Vision Zero Vancouver stated that they watered down the original plan, as it directed staff not to proceed with speed reduction on major streets, among other changes).
Further, Dominato said that in Council’s next four-year capital plan, which was approved in July, they have $180 million allocated for road safety and mobility, which includes things like new sidewalks, bus improvements, and new signals.
“[There are] comprehensive investments being made to address pedestrian and cyclist safety and road safety,” Dominato said. “ABC Vancouver has made this a priority throughout the term and will continue to do so.”
“I think that everyone around that council table believes that this is important,” she said.
“When I was first elected in 2018, I heard from community members, from families, from individuals across different neighborhoods, that as we have greater densification, more people living in our city, more vehicles, more modes of transportation, that [road safety] is important to our quality of life and living. And that’s exactly why we’ve been making these investments, and we’ll continue to do so through the next four-year capital plan.”