Here are the most dangerous intersections in St. John's, according to the city

According to the city's most recent collision report, Rawlins Cross had 56 collisions and a 41 per cent injury rate. (Ted Dillon/CBC)

The city of St. John's has broken down five years of collision data for its streets and has outlined its most dangerous intersections.

At the top of the list was Goldstone Street at Thorburn Road and Seaborn Street, with a total of 43 collisions and a 35 per cent rate of injury.

At second place was Higgins Line and Portugal Cove Road at Newfoundland Drive, with far more collisions — 76 — and a 41 per cent injury rate.

Third place is Rawlins Cross, with 56 collisions and a 41 per cent injury rate.

Amer Afridi, the city's transportation division manager, explained that the Goldstone Street intersection outranked Higgins Line because of the frequency of vehicles driving through the area.

"We are trying to dig deep down into the collisions that are reported in the provincial database," Afridi told CBC News on Tuesday.

"That will provide us, in a snapshot, to go after the hotspots within the city. It will provide us the ranking that we have done for intersections and also ranking for the mid-block as well as pedestrian and cyclist collisions."

The report covered a five-year period from Jan. 1, 2018 to Dec. 31, 2022, with the data coming from the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistical Agency. It looked at intersections and mid-blocks — road segments between two intersections — including those involving pedestrians and cyclists.

These are the 25 intersections that were identified as having a high collision risk. (City of St. John's)

In that five-year period there were 6,566 reported collisions, of which 47 per cent were at intersections and had a higher chance of resulting in injury. There were 354 pedestrian and 69 cyclist-related reported collisions in St. John's.

In terms of the national average, Afridi said the city has a 3.3 per cent average annual fatal collisions per 100,000 population, where the national average is 4.7 per cent and the provincial average is 6.7 per cent.

"So this report, in a nutshell, tells us that OK, we are doing OK, but still there is room for improvement and we are striving for that in order to pinpoint the high crash locations within the city and see what improvements we can do in moving forward," said Afirdi.

When it came to ranking mid-block locations, Kelsey Drive between Kiwanis Street and Messenger Drive was ranked the most dangerous of its kind.

The other top contenders were Kenmount Road between the Avalon Mall parking lot and Peet Street, and Torbay Road between the Trans-Canada Highway and Stavanger Drive.

The report found that the most common collision for mid-blocks was rear-end collisions, followed by hitting a parked car.

Council approved

The report was tabled Coun. Sandy Hickman during Tuesday afternoon's committee of the whole meeting, which voted 11-0 to approve collision reports will now be tabled every three years instead of annually.

The committee also approved the next step: Letting city staff carry out an assessment of the higher collision risk sites, which could lead to design improvements.

Mayor Danny Breen raised the issue of enforcement around road rules and the potential future use of traffic cameras, adding that a pilot project report is going to be released soon.

"I hope that it gets dealt with soon so we can move forward on this. It's going to make a big difference in terms of the safety in the city and the increased enforcement will be well received by the public in making our roads safer," said Breen.

Amer Afridi, transportation division manager with the city of St. John's, says plans are in the works to improve the city's collision 'hotspots.' (Submitted by Jackie O'Brien)

Environmental conditions were also captured in the report, which found 61 per cent of collisions happened when the weather was fine, with 18 per cent taking place during overcast weather, 10 per cent when it was raining and seven per cent when snowing.

Coun. Maggie Burton said she found that detail interesting because it "wasn't what you would think."

Burton also hoped that the city would be able to quickly act on tackling the identified locations rather than commission more studies.

Improvements coming

Afridi said work is already underway to make some of those listed areas safer for people, like at Kelsey Drive and Hamlyn Road.

For instance, he said the data noted that left turns have higher rates of collision so they're creating plans to update the Goldstone intersection. The designs should be completed by mid-2024, though he couldn't say when those changes could be implemented.

St. John's Mayor Danny Breen voiced support for installing traffic cameras in the city during Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting. (Darryl Murphy/CBC)

In a past report, Rawlins Cross — a hub which connects several downtown streets — topped the city's list of collision heavy intersections.

In the most recent report, it was ranked third.

Rawlins Cross was the site of a pilot project, which started in 2018 and saw the introduction of a makeshift roundabout and yield signs. Accidents had dropped nearly 53 per cent.

City staff had recommended making the changes permanent, however there was a petition over pedestrian concerns to revert it back and council voted to scrap the makeshift roundabout and turn the traffic lights back on in late March, 2020.

Afridi said the city is still looking at making improvements at Rawlins Cross, which he called challenging because of the number of streets that lead into it, like Queen's Road, Flavin, Prescott Street and Rennie's Mill Road.

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