Cycling, pedestrian advocate seeks more data on street safety in Summerside
A safe streets advocate in Summerside, P.E.I., wants more data on collisions between vehicles and cyclists or pedestrians in the city.
Ken Trenholm is president of the non-profit group SAFE Summerside, which stands for Streets Are For Everyone.
He says knowing more about how and when collisions happen could help prevent them.
"Many times it's motor vehicles backing into a pedestrian," Trenholm told CBC's Island Morning host Mitch Cormier on Tuesday. "Or pedestrians who are on crosswalks, or pedestrians who are on sidewalks."
The new active transportation lane along Greenwood Drive runs between Pope Road and Water Street in Summerside. (Submitted by Ken Trenholm)
According to data on the SAFE website, which Trenholm said he got from Summerside Police Services, 16 pedestrians or cyclists were involved in a collision with a vehicle in 2022.
That was more than double the seven such collisions in the year before, and an increase from the previous two years as well, with 11 in 2020, and eight in 2019.
CBC News asked the City of Summerside to verify those collision numbers, but did not receive confirmation by the time of publication.
Trenholm wants to understand more about exactly where and how these collisions happened, and see if there were any patterns, in hopes they could be prevented.
The majority of vehicle incidents involving a pedestrian or cyclist — 59 per cent of them — happened at intersections. But between 12 to 20 per cent occurred in parking lots, according to SAFE Summerside's data.
Trenholm said he now always backs into parking spaces in lots, so he can see people better when pulling out — and he thinks more people would do the same if they understood the risks of reversing from spaces with poor visibility.
"That would reduce the collisions just by that simple piece of education," he said.
The city of Summerside says it plans to add flashing lights at the intersection of Pope Road and Greenwood Drive this year. (Tony Davis/CBC)
Early last month, Summerside City Council approved funding to start building an active transportation lane along Pope Road in its 2024 budget.
The new lane — for cyclists, pedestrians and other active road users would — connect to the existing bike lane on Greenwood Drive that runs to Water Street.
"Pope Road was a high priority — not only for us, but for SAFE Summerside," said J.P. Desrosiers, Summerside's deputy chief administrative officer.
The city will also add flashing lights to the crosswalk near the intersection of Greenwood Drive and Pope Road.
"The way we move people through our city is ever-changing and something that we need to stay on top of," Desrosiers told Cormier on CBC's Island Morning on Tuesday.
Summerside Police Services gathers data on collisions, Desrosiers said, but that information is typically only shared with the public when requested.
"We don't want to take officers off the streets to gather this information," he said. "But at the same time, when police officers have time to do so, we certainly will share it."
'React as quickly as possible'
Desrosiers explained that when there's a collision between a cyclist or pedestrian and a vehicle, the city uses third-party engineers to review what happened, and to see if any changes need to be made at the location.
"If there's quick fixes to these types of incidents, we certainly will react as quickly as possible," he said, "whether it's adding signage or public information."
Summerside's population growth is always a consideration when thinking about active transportation, he added, including in which areas of the city there are more pedestrians over time.
"As we see the pedestrian traffic sort of shift from … neighborhoods to people trying to access our commercial district on foot, we have to be more cognizant of that," Desrosiers said.
