By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, October 16, 2020
It’s budget season at City Hall and apparently they want our opinion. Here’s mine: We can improve pedestrian and cyclist safety without spending money — in fact, we could even turn a tidy profit. Who’s with me?
Safety has no price, obviously. Except for the 29 intersections identified in a recent study as the most dangerous in Ottawa. Fixing those so they’re no longer death traps for cyclists and pedestrians would cost $32 million.
Personally, I think it would be a bargain at $100 million which, incidentally, is what we’re spending to widen 3.3 kilometres of Strandherd Drive. That’s more than $30 million per kilometre, in case you were wondering.
Spending $100 million to fix a tiny stretch of Barrhaven road is apparently no big deal but we can’t possibly spend one-third of that to improve safety for vulnerable road users at more than two dozen notoriously dangerous intersections?
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/pellerin-we-can-make-ottawa-roads-safer-and-also-make-a-profit