We chose to move to Nanaimo due to our love of the outdoors, as well as the community we want to raise our family in, and bought our house accordingly--we are walking distance to the Quality Foods (800 metres), as well as Georgia Avenue (1.5 KM) and John Barsby ( 850 metres from my house), as a fifteen minute city, and sustainability are important to us.

There is no crosswalk at the intersection of Eighth and Howard. In fact the only crosswalk in the vicinity is approximately 500 metres away at Seventh and Howard. The west side of Howard has no sidewalk, save for about 60 metres from Rotayo and Howard's intersection, before it ends into an unsafe shoulder, often where cars are parked. This means that pedestrians get to choose to walk along an unsafe shoulder with parked cars to get to the crosswalk at Seventh and Howard (the final crosswalk before Howard ends) or cross at Eighth and Howard, without a sidewalk and with no protection, which is the perfect position for a crosswalk, with a wide sidewalk. 

I wrote to the city at the end of November requesting they look into this, and got the following response.:

" We collected the pedestrian crossing demand here in 2022 on a Thursday from 7 AM to 7 PM. During that 12-hour period, there were 4 pedestrians crossing on the north leg of Howard Ave and 11 pedestrians crossing on the south leg of Howard Ave. During peak hours (8-9 AM, 4:15-5:15 PM) there was no pedestrian crossing Howard Ave. These numbers are lower than our warrant threshold for a marked crosswalk, because of this, we will not be installing a marked crosswalk on Howard Ave."

This is, in my mind, an unacceptable way to do a civic study, as the city negated to factor in 1) the weather. My original request was sent on November 30th, that means they were doing this study in December, when people are obviously choosing to drive rather than walk. 2) this also ignores how many new houses have already been built and moved into, as well as the future sales and in progress construction. People buy houses in the Spring, and in a neighbourhood development, specifically targeting families, have kids who walk to school. The city needs to be proactive, rather than reactive. The houses are being built/already built. Kids are in the neighbourhood walking to school. It's not a hard problem.

I understand that there is science behind when crosswalks are where drivers perceive them to be useless, they ignore them and they give pedestrians a false sense of security. But let's be realistic, the fact that drivers break laws and ignore signs is not a reason to not have a crosswalk. This neighbourhood is built for families, and the city should be actively working to make sure there is infrastructure for their safety.

Please sign so we can keep this neighbourhood safe for families who are missing critical infrastructure.