Vancouver advocates call for bollards at deadly Hornby intersection
An advocacy group is calling on the City of Vancouver to install bollards along Hornby Street to protect pedestrians from traffic.
The length of Hornby running between Pacific and Dunsmuir has had several incidents where drivers drove onto the sidewalk and hit pedestrians, so Vision Zero Vancouver, a group that advocates for road safety, wants the City to pilot the use of bollards (short, vertical posts that separate pedestrians from vehicles) along Hornby.
“This stretch of Hornby has seen four horrific incidents of drivers coming onto the sidewalk in recent years,” said Margie Sanderson, Vision Zero Vancouver’s director of organizing.
In 2021, a 23-month-old baby was killed.
Her father was carrying her on the sidewalk when two vehicles collided at Hornby and Smithe. One of the vehicles mounted the sidewalk and hit them, and the child succumbed to her injuries immediately.
Other incidents in that stretch include a vehicle jumping a curb and hitting a mom and child, a Honda crashing into a dental office, and a car jumping a curb while parallel parking and hitting several people.
“Bollards would be an intervention to keep people safe on the sidewalk, right, which is really like a bare minimum to expect — that if you’re standing on the sidewalk, you are safe from being hit by a car,” said Sanderson.
What does Vision Zero Vancouver want?
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Bollards are short, sturdy posts made from a tough material, metal and designed to stop a vehicle on impact.
Major North American cities like New York City have started using them to protect pedestrians from traffic.
Vision Zero Vancouver hopes that the City will use Hornby as a pilot project, installing bollards along the street. If they work, the group wants to see the City install bollards in other high-risk areas.
“It’s a very busy area. It’s in our downtown core. It’s got lots of pedestrian activity, shopping attractions, and so it’s a prime type of area where other cities would use bollards,” said Sanderson. “We think this would be a natural place to start.”
Why is Hornby Street so dangerous?
Vision Zero Vancouver does not know why this area has seen repeated crashes.
“Broadly, we do know why these things happen. We do know that we have a transportation system that prioritizes vehicle speed, vehicle throughput, over safety,” said Sanderson.
But in the granular sense, she said that vehicle crashes aren’t investigated thoroughly enough to have a good understanding as to why they occur.
“We need to redesign our streets to put safety first above vehicle speeds. We know that incidents like we’ve seen on Hornby will continue to happen until there are multiple layers of protection in place in that area. And we think that the failure to act is complicity. ”