Hundreds of driving infractions at one Edmonton intersection highlight the importance of road design

This is the intersection at the corner of 100 St. and 102nd Ave. in downtown Edmonton, right next to the new Churchill Valley Line LRT station. We were curious how drivers were navigating the updated intersection, so back in February we set up a camera for 48 hours. In that time, we saw all kinds of errors by motorists, from illegal turns to driving in the bike lane. This intersection has a relatively new design intended to be safer for cyclists and pedestrians, if you’re not familiar with it. They’re the LRT tracks, a single lane for one way vehicle traffic and a two way bike lane. But a road design is only as safe as it gets used in real life. Here are the mistakes we spotted. 89 people drove in the bike lanes, 55 people made an illegal left turn across the LRT tracks, and 178 people stopped at a red light while blocking the crosswalk or bike turn box. These aren’t just harmless mistakes, they can create unsafe situations for other road users, especially cyclists and pedestrians. So for example, the number of cars that are driving in the bike lane. I myself, as a user of the One O 2, have bike lane quite frequently. Will often wind up coming behind a car. Or cars coming behind me. And it can be quite scary and quite intimidating for people to kind of be faced with a vehicle when that space is supposed to be for cyclists or for pedestrians. The pandemic saw reduced car traffic levels in 2020, and statistics show that Edmonton streets were safer as a result. But the cars have returned, and collisions between cars and cyclists and pedestrians are on the rise after years of falling, the combined rate of fatalities and serious injuries among all Edmonton road users. Was the highest it’s been in a decade. In 2022, the most recent year for data, our city built out a time when the private vehicle was really the dominant form of transportation and and the vast majority of people that were involved in the planning really focused on that, that single mode. What we’re really realizing now is that what’s so important in a city and especially as we grow is that we have a diversity of of transportation options and it’s it’s a huge job to retroactively bring that to our city. As for 102nd Ave. City Council passed a motion put forward by Stevenson to review how well the design was working after six months of Valley Line service. That report is expected in the fall. Taylor Lambert, CBC News, Edmonton.