Eleven days ago, on March 6th, a cyclist was killed by a dump truck driver some five blocks from my apartment. I still don’t know her name or have any idea what she looks like, but I think about her every time I roll out the door to go somewhere on my bike.
Today her death was particularly front of mind as my wife, my 8-year-old, and I left home, each on our own bikes, for a pedal along the City Of North Vancouver’s Green Necklace, via Jones Ave, so that Claire could ride the gravel trails in Greenwood Park on her new commuter rig.
“An off-street multi-use path, the Green Necklace provides a safe transportation and recreational route for all ages and abilities.“
The Green Necklace does feature a number of busy street crossings, but in general, they have good visibility and we have an excellent track record of cars stopping for the controlled crossings. Unfortunately, just as a large construction project is taking place at Lonsdale & 23rd, where the aforementioned woman was killed just over a week ago, there is also extensive construction happening at Lonsdale & 21st.
The construction site at 21st has long consumed the Green Necklace’s paved path and both signage and vertical paint were set up as a temporary replacement. For us it’s still the safest point on the Lonsdale Plateau to cross four lanes of traffic.
I’m forever surprised by my own naïveté. Every cyclist I know in North Vancouver took stock of their own best practices as a woman was killed by a dump truck driver on a road that most of us have been down many times. I would have expected that every construction company would have done the same?
Instead, following the Green Necklace route as there is no safe(r) alternative for joining the now truncated sections, we rounded the corner from 21st to Eastern Ave, and the situation there is even worse. On Eastern, the construction company is using the bike lane to store fucking building supplies and there’s heavy equipment moving in and out of the “off-street multi-use path” without a flag person in sight.
Maybe worst of all is the construction project is run by a local company, Darwin, employing local folks and making big claims about “building community.” I’d have thought that after a woman was killed by a construction project just up the street, eleven fucking days ago, they’d have taken a quick minute to be sure they weren’t putting other folks at risk.
I contacted my local council member, thanks Tony Valente, and you can too:
Engineering: eng@cnv.org
Council: citycouncil@cnv.org
Mayor: mayor@cnv.org
Your Death’s Not A Crime:
-Just Take That Fucking Door, Andrew
-Your Death Is Not A Crime (It’s A Cycling Accident)