Truckloads of Hopes and Prayers: the Persistent Lack of Road User Safety in Road Design in the Sault

Citizens don't need truckloads of hopes and prayers from the city in response to the predictable and avoidable death of a pedestrian on Dacey road.

Every death and serious injury from collisions is100% preventable, and the city knows how.

They simply prioritise drivers and motor vehicles over people and lives.

Citizens are demanding change. Again, and again and again and again and again. Yet the problem persists.

It's not, as staff correspondence in this sootoday article imply, a matter of prioritising one traffic calming set of features for a neighbourhood over another neighbourhood. (Note these are not traffic calming plans – they are merely features randomly selected, a tactic prone to failure).

Pitting one neighbourhood against another for safety is simply a distraction intended to divide and conquer.

The matter is that the city is deliberately directing massive amounts of taxpayer money – 90% of municipal capital funding – to continue reconstructing and reproducing roads that are known to generate unsafe spaces for road users, and that compromise the safety of our most vulnerable road users including children, pedestrians, cyclists, seniors, and others.

And then offering breadcrumbs for poorly considered “traffic calming” features.

If they can find the budget.

And truckloads of hopes and prayers.

The council discussion on Peoples Road reconstruction was a perfect example of prioritising drivers over people; unsafe road infrastructure over safety for all road users; vehicles over pedestrians and cyclists.

Despite explicitly referencing the presence of daycares and pedestrians during that council discussion, and cyclist and pedestrian deaths on Peoples Road, council overrode staff and voted to reproduce an unsafe road that would knowingly compromise the safety of people, all for the convenience of cars, trucks and drivers (motornormativity).

The ironies of that decision given the roads' name cannot be ignored.

More ironic, the result will actually compromise driver expectations by generating more congestion, traffic and road damage!

And that council discussion neatly avoided known safer solutions.

Solutions that, again, ironically, reduce congestion, traffic and road damage – exactly what drivers want!

The reconstruction of Peoples Road simply reproduced an unsafe road infrastructure that road users and taxpayers are now stuck with for the next 50 years.

With no viable pedestrian or cycling infrastructure available.

Or safety features, let alone a plan.

Truckloads of hopes and prayers won't stop the carnage on our streets.

Politicians who listen to and act on reason, science and evidence will.

Actions speak louder than words.

Peoples road is not the first, it's not the only this year alone, and it won't be the last, unless something changes.

Following decades of refusal by the city to design safe spaces for all road users, and the mounting human, environmental, health and financial costs of business as usual, the Crane Institute repeats our call made in 2018 and since for a moratorium on all capital road projects until such time as a plan has been established to ensure roads are reconstructed to a safe standard that accommodates and ensures the safety of all road users when reconstruction does occur.

Let's call that plan a Vision Zero for zero deaths or serious injuries from collisions.

We also now call on the city to reallocate all capital road funding proposed for the 2026 budget to prioritise safe “environmental design” so that traffic calming plans and speed reductions are prioritised over reconstructing and reproducing unsafe road designs, beginning in 2026 with the current budget deliberations.

The city knows what needs to be done. It will cost less. And it will save lives.

We need fewer truckloads of hopes and prayers, and more action.