Traffic Deaths Aren't "Meant to Be"
Michel Durand-Wood is a Strong Towns member in Manitoba, Canada, who writes about infrastructure and municipal finance at Dear Winnipeg. This article first appeared there in slightly different format, and is shared here with permission. All images for this post were provided by the author.
Image Source: Mark Arron Smith on Pexels
Dear Winnipeg,
I know I’ve been writing a lot about transportation lately, so I’m going to ask you to just indulge me once more, and then I promise I’ll go back to picking on the planners.
(Note to self: “Picking on the planners” would make a great title for a bluegrass album.)
One thing that comes up a lot whenever there’s discussion about making any changes to an arterial that runs through a neighborhood is: “We can’t do that… It’s an arterial. It’s meant to move traffic.”
This, just like my idea to start a bluegrass band, might seem reasonable at first glance. But is it?
(Additional note to self: Google banjo lessons.)
It’s easy to look at a roadway the way it is today and assume that it’s always been that way. And therefore, that it always will be. Forever and ever, amen.
(Yaaaassss! That’s totally going on the album!)
But let’s take a little historical journey together to examine whether that is really true, using my own neighborhood high street as a case study.
What is known today as the southernmost stretch of Henderson Highway was actually called Kelvin Street around the time when Elmwood first joined the City of Winnipeg, back in 1906. Back then, the corner of Kelvin and Hespeler was one of two relatively concentrated nodes of development happening here.
Described in an October 30, 1905, Free Press article as an “enterprising cosmopolitan district rapidly growing in population,” the area was home to nearly 4,000 people (up from only 40 just ten years earlier), as well as “many fine places of business.”
“At present, the ward is a complete community with every suburban convenience from a newspaper and a street car [sic] line to a barbershop and shoe shining stand. The ward has its own schools, churches, societies and industries. (…) Among the principal employers of labor are (a) pork packing establishment, (…) brick yards, (…) tannery, (…) brewery and (…) iron works. There are fifteen grocery stores, two drug stores, one blacksmith shop, one carriage builder, four butchers and one hardware store. Two doctors are practising in the ward and three new hotels are seeking licenses.”
— Manitoba Free Press, March 6th, 1906
The Northeast Winnipeg Historical Society found that by 1915, there were 23 businesses located just on the one stretch of Kelvin Street from the river to Harbison Avenue West (the city limits at the time). Streetcar service here ran every five minutes from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily, with peak periods seeing service every three minutes, according to a 1913 by-law. Ten years later, you could count nearly three dozen small businesses operating on Elmwood’s main street, growing to 56 in 1935, to 66 in 1945, and even to a whopping 86 different businesses in 1955!
Even though there were plenty of cars around in 1955, getting them to move quickly through here wasn’t the goal. This was obviously a place you traveled to, not through.
Then in 1959, the Disraeli bridge was built, and the City started to make different choices for Kelvin Street.
Almost immediately, there were calls to increase the speed limit (a January 11, 1962, Winnipeg Tribune article shows a Highway Traffic Board recommendation of up to 40 mph, or about 65 km/h, on Kelvin Street!). And only three years later, Kelvin Street was renamed Henderson Highway, a strong foreshadowing of the many choices yet to be made.
“As you know, our neighborhood was pretty well destroyed in the early 60s when Henderson Highway went right down the center of our little village.
Since then, a lot of the businesses have folded and gone. I’ve been here 45 years; I’ve seen the businesses go one after another. It’s just a downhill climb.”
— Longtime Elmwood resident at an April 28, 2016, Appeal Committee public hearing
One such choice happened in the summer of 1982. Eight-year-old Jody Dyck was killed while crossing at the Larsen Avenue pedestrian corridor beside Elmwood (Roxy) Park. Residents were angry. In a letter from Community Committee, they asked the public service to install traffic lights at nearby Martin Avenue W in order to slow traffic.
The public service declined since “the present traffic characteristics” didn’t warrant it. In response, the community asked the public service to identify a location for traffic lights anywhere between Munroe Avenue and Johnson Avenue. I didn’t find a response to that, but the fact that no traffic lights exist there today tells us what their answer was.
A child died, residents were angry, and we shaped Henderson to prioritize traffic. It wasn’t pre-ordained. It was a choice.
Only 5 years later, local dentist Dr. Richard Bird was killed while crossing Henderson at Martin, in front of his own office.
Again, Elmwood residents got organized to demand changes. Hundreds signed a petition circulated by local businesspeople. A September 27th, 1987, Free Press article relates residents presenting an 11-point plan to Council to increase safety at the “Death Curve,” which included reducing the speed limit to 40 km/h and (again) adding traffic lights at Martin Avenue West, along with several other items meant to “control the flow of traffic.” The article also states that the issue of pedestrian safety here “has concerned Elmwood residents for the last 20 years.” You know, like since the 1960s.
Instead, the City straightened and flattened the curve so traffic didn’t have to slow down, and put up a barricade in the median to prevent pedestrians from crossing there.
A well-respected member of the community died, residents were angry, and we shaped Henderson to prioritize traffic. It wasn’t providence. It was a choice.
The former office of local dentist Dr Richard Bird. Now the office of my optometrist.
Then in 1996, 12-year-old Amanda Peters was hit while crossing Henderson at a pedestrian corridor in front of her school at MBCI. She survived and used her experience to ask the city to make the crossing safer. “Just two hours after her younger sister urged city hall to make Henderson Highway safer for pedestrians, (15-year-old) Connie Peters was hit by a car on that road” read the December 5, 1996, issue of the Free Press.
Since reducing traffic speeds was never on the table, the sisters had to settle for moving the pedestrian corridor and bus stop to a more “visible” location.
If you’ve ever wondered why there’s a pedestrian crossing and a bus stop in the middle of nowhere by the cemetery, instead of a more useful location by the school, this is why.
The red circle shows the original location of the crossing and bus stops. Their new location is visible in the upper left.
Two sisters survived their walks to school by luck alone. But once again, we shaped Henderson to prioritize traffic. It wasn’t destiny. It was a choice.
I’m not writing this to lament the past, or to cast blame. Rather, I’m writing this to show that none of it was “meant to be.” It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to continue to be. It’s simply a result of policy choices. And while fighting the will of God might seem as ill-advised as naming your bluegrass band the Rag Baskets, making different policy choices isn’t.
We can make this area safe and pleasant for residents again. We just have to choose that over traffic.
We can make this area good for local businesses again. We just have to choose that over traffic.
We can make this a place you travel to, instead of through, again. We just have to choose that over traffic.
Now I know what you’re thinking: The majority has spoken, we’ve made Henderson in your neighborhood an arterial whose sole purpose is moving traffic, and that’s that. Deal with it. If you don’t like it, just move.
And that’s precisely my point.
A place can’t be good at moving cars quickly, and also be a nice neighborhood to live and work in. If you insist on moving cars quickly as a priority, inevitably, people have to move away. It has to stop being a neighborhood.
You’ll remember these maps from my last letter:
Now tell me if you see a correlation with this map of all the “stuff” in my neighborhood:
That’s right. Collisions happen where the stuff is. Traffic engineers may call them “pedestrians” and “cyclists,” but to the people of Elmwood, they’re just our neighbors trying to get to school, or the dentist, or the park. Just living life in our neighborhood.
And that’s completely at odds with moving traffic quickly. What’s good for one is necessarily bad for the other.
Worse yet, despite the decades of effort, Henderson isn’t even very good at moving traffic quickly. There isn’t a single driver who comes through here that doesn’t have something negative to say about the congestion on Henderson.
But until you’ve removed the entire neighborhood, Henderson will continue to suck at moving cars quickly.
We can’t have both. We either remove the neighborhood so we can move cars quickly, or we accept that slow-moving traffic is the price we pay for having nice things. It’s not any more complicated than that.
And the reality is, this isn’t unique to Elmwood. If you live in a neighborhood that existed before the 1950s, your high street likely has a similar history. And, like my street, it likely still has its good “bones” intact. I’m thinking not only of Osborne and Corydon of course, but of places like Selkirk Avenue, Provencher Boulevard, and Regent Avenue in downtown Transcona.
Making these streets productive again so that they generate more property taxes than they require in infrastructure servicing can be done.
Making these streets pleasant and safe for the people who live in the surrounding neighborhoods can be done.
Making these streets good for small businesses again can be done.
We just have to stop blaming fate and choose it.
Kisses,
Elmwood Guy
P.S. A huge thank you to the staff from the City Clerk’s office who helped me search the old Council minutes, as well as to both the Northeast Winnipeg Historical Society and local historian Chris Cassidy, whose prior research I relied upon heavily for this post.
We can and must do more to make our streets safer. Here’s how.
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town is the new book from Strong Towns president Charles Marohn, wherein he pulls back the curtain on North American’s broken transportation system. Order your copy today at confessions.engineer/order.
Michel Durand-Wood lives in the Winnipeg neighborhood of Elmwood with his wife and three children. He writes at DearWinnipeg.com, a really fun blog about infrastructure and municipal finance. He has no formal training or education in city planning, municipal finance, infrastructure maintenance, or anything else he talks about. He's just a guy, in love with a city, asking it to make better use of his tax dollars.