Crossing lights installed after years of angst

Years of residents raising concerns over the safety of a crosswalk on one of Brandon’s busiest streets finally paid off this winter.

Crosswalk lights were installed in January at the intersection of 18th Street and Lorne Avenue in front of Brandon University.

“We’ve been asking for it for years. We’ve wanted it for years,” Lynn MacKay, a professor in BU’s history department, told the Sun.

“Before these lights, it was just a death trap after dark.”

BU announced the safety improvement in a news release on Friday, describing it as a collaboration between the province, the university and the City of Brandon.

The new lighting consists of three sets of rectangular rapid flashing beacons that can be activated by the wave of a hand.

MacKay said while she has never been hit at the intersection, she knows people who have, and she has had her fair share of close calls.

“I have spent the last 28 years taking my life in my hands every time I try to cross there,” she said, adding she sometimes uses the crosswalk three or four times a day to get from her home to the university.

“I’ve been halfway across, and somebody will just zoom through. It’s just so frustrating … Before the lights were there, they just genuinely seemed to think it was optional.”

She said she’s grateful that lighting has “finally” been installed.

MacKay has already noticed a difference in drivers and said, now, when someone pushes the button, “they almost always stop.”

Up until Jan. 21, when the lights were fully installed, the crossing was marked by signage. Brandon residents have expressed their concerns about the safety of the intersection for the last two decades.

In 2007, a vehicle hit a woman in her mid-twenties who was crossing the intersection. While her injuries were non-life-threatening, police at the time said the woman was “distraught.”

Later that week, more than 200 Brandon University students signed a petition demanding that the city install crosswalk lights.

In 2019, a nine-year-old boy was struck by a vehicle while crossing the intersection and was left with scrapes and bruises.

Sam van Huizen, the city’s traffic and transportation planner, said at the time the city wasn’t contemplating any changes to the intersection and pointed out that there was already a lighted crosswalk at 18th Street and Louise Avenue, along with crossing signals at Princess Avenue.

Grant Hamilton, BU’s director of marketing and communications, told the Sun that with the university’s new safety app, BU READY, they have a better ability to collect incident reports, and the school has specifically been pushing for people to report “near misses.”

“We want to know not just what happens, but what almost happened,” he said. “By collecting that data (and) sharing it with the province, we were able to get their attention.”

Hamilton said a followup traffic study found that the crossing “absolutely warrants intersection improvement for pedestrians.”

A provincial spokesperson told the Sun on Friday that the annual average daily traffic estimate for the intersection in 2024 was 9,230 vehicles per day, with a crosswalk average of 45 pedestrians per hour.

Hamilton said the response from students and staff at BU has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

“This was an area of concern, and everyone’s happy to see it.”

Huizen told the Sun on Friday that the lights make pedestrians more visible, especially during “low visibility hours” when a driver may not see a person standing on the sidewalk or waving at cars.

When asked why it took so long for the lights to be installed, he said he believed “formal” discussions between the city and BU started last summer.

He said the city’s stance has always been that there is “enhanced public infrastructure” at Louise Avenue and Princess Avenue.

“When we want to locate facilities, at least with city funds, we want to do that in an equitable and responsible manner, and we thought that with the protection in place within a reasonable distance for an adult to move, it made sense … to defer our funding elsewhere.”

The city’s focus has been prioritizing school routes where elementary school children are and areas where older populations live, van Huizen said.

He said while lights help with visibility, they aren’t a 100 per cent safeguard. It’s important for pedestrians to make eye contact with a driver and ensure the vehicle is coming to a stop or has already stopped — in both lanes — before entering the roadway, he said.

If residents are concerned about other areas within the city, they can send an email to roadsafety@brandon.ca.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com