City looking into ‘dangerous’ crosswalk near Mission Memorial Hospital following concerns

MISSION (NEWS 1130) – A crosswalk just blocks from Mission Memorial Hospital, is being called potentially deadly by those in a closed Facebook group.

The crossing on Hurd Street at Diamond Avenue only has a ramp on one side and some say they’ve seen people in wheelchairs or mobility scooter stuck at the curb or even fallen there.

“This crosswalk is a HAZARD and nearly cost us our 4yr old [sic] daughter’s life, on more than one occasion now, as well as a woman’s life, after she fell out of her wheelchair and on the road, while cars continued to drive through the crosswalk.’ She was entering the crosswalk from the NON-RAMP side, and took a tumble onto the road,” writes one person in the Facebook group.

The municipality is now aware of it, after a couple of Mission councillors were tagged in one of the posts. The District of Mission’s Michael Boronowski admits it appears like there is a problem.

“It does look like a poor intersection where you have a crosswalk coming off of a hard curb and a ramp only on one side. There is a fully-ramped crosswalk one hundred metres further south at Hillcrest Avenue,” says Boronowski.

“The information that was posted on Facebook and shared with a couple councillors has also come in through an official channel and been forwarded on to staff.”

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The concerns are now in front of the Mission Traffic and Transit Committee, which will decide whether to deem it a high-priority problem.

The sidewalk on that block of Hurd Street itself has been as is for years. Anything is possible, including temporarily closing the crosswalk but Boronowski says having two other fully-accessible crossings nearby, likely means other priorities could take precedent.

“I would imagine that it’s probably not an ultra-high-priority emergency issue given that within two hundred metres, there are two fully-ramped sidewalks that cross that same street.”

That logic doesn’t add up says Brad McCannell, the Rick Hanson Foundation’s vice president of access and inclusion.

“The idea that ‘oh well, there’s another crosswalk down the way,’ we would have no way of knowing. Second, they’re viewing this as a problem for a small number of people, maybe a few wheelchair users. But it’s much broader than that. Imagine a mother pushing a baby carriage, getting to the other side and discovering there’s no way out of the path of travel of the vehicle,” says McCannell.

“This is actually a classic and very common problem. Municipalities view intersections by corner rather than as a whole. When they repair one corner, they’ll put in a new curb ramp. But if they’re not repairing the other side, you have to wait until that comes along.

“You need curb ramps everywhere anyway. But the real danger comes when there’s one on one side but not on the other.”