Some East Vancouver residents can’t find common ground when it comes to addressing road safety in their neighbourhood. The differing perspectives centre around traffic-calming measures in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood, which include the phased installation of speed humps, signage and barriers to create one-way streets. Tom Siracusa, a long-time resident, said he wants the barriers removed. He has started a petition called “Remove the barriers,” asking council to reconsider the plan. “If you close a road, well, the cars need to go somewhere,” he said. “People live in the neighborhood, there’s churches in the neighborhood, schools in the neighborhood. How can closing a road do anything other than divert traffic?” Siracusa and other residents CTV News spoke with said drivers are now speeding in back alleys to dodge the barriers. At a diversion on Parker and Windermere streets, someone had physically moved the corner of a concrete barrier to maneuver around it. Siracusa believes stop signs will suffice to solve the problem, instead of the approach the city has implemented. “I think for quite a few people, they just don’t want this,” he said. “And we’re now ready to take a stand.” Safety concerns According to the City of Vancouver, the The Hastings-Sunrise (Adanac Overpass Area) Traffic Calming Project was implemented to address “longstanding concerns about speeding and traffic shortcutting, and was developed following an extensive public consultation process.” That process was informed by two phases of public engagement dating back to 2023. “The traffic volumes in this area are also two to four times higher than typical local streets,” the city said. Support for traffic-calming measures Rhiannon Fox, an East Vancouver resident and volunteer with Vision Zero, a group that advocates to end fatalities and serious injuries, said she was hit by a driver who was speeding in February, just outside of where the physical barriers exist. “I just can’t help thinking that, you know, if this had been north of First (Avenue), it might not have happened, because of the traffic calming infrastructure that’s installed,” she said. Fox said she’s supportive of the plan, due the amount of cut-through traffic the area sees from its proximity to Highway 1 and event traffic from the PNE and Playland. “People’s safety shouldn’t be dependent on popular opinion,” she said. “The data shows, both here in Vancouver and in other municipalities around the world, that traffic calming makes streets safer.” Asked about the barriers, the City of Vancouver said it has received calls from residents about having to travel extra blocks to get home, but added that “the trade-offs are quieter, safer streets with less overall traffic.” An alternative petition called “Keep the Calming: Safe Street in Hastings-Sunrise” was created in October. The city added, it is monitoring the impacts of the measures and collecting traffic speed and volume data, along with community feedback, to assess their effectiveness. “Based on this evaluation, staff may adjust, relocate, or remove specific measures, with any refinements expected to be considered in early 2027,” the city said. City councillors weigh in ABC Coun. Mike Klassen, whose party campaigned on removing the barriers ahead of October’s municipal election, said while the city has a long-standing policy of traffic-calming within neighbourhoods, he believed there had been an “over-reach” in this community. “What this particular neighbourhood has become is almost a human-scale game of Pac-Man, where you have to dodge around and people are going through alleyways,” he said. “And of course, we have delivery vehicles, and it has become a situation where it’s become very frustrating. I would say that having spent some time in that neighborhood with dozens of very frustrated residents in the area, the question I have is, ‘Can we kind of take it back to the drawing board a little bit?’” Green Party Coun. Annette Reilly said she was also open to asking staff to report back on whether some changes could be made, but said safety is the number one priority. “The fact is that part of Vancouver Hastings-Sunrise receives a lot of commuter traffic,” she said. “There’s a lot of rat-running where people are being diverted, even through the map apps there. The map apps are starting to divert people through back alleys, through side streets to avoid traffic back up. And that’s obviously going to be terrible and could create unsafe situations within that neighborhood for the residents there.”
