Lord Byng Students Are Still Calling for Safer Streets

It’s been nearly two years since a Vancouver high school student was left with “life-changing injuries” after being struck by a vehicle outside her school.

But students say the city hasn’t done enough to make sure they and their classmates are able to cross a busy arterial road safely.

Grade 11 students Victoria Wong Chong and Minsung Kim say crossing West 16th Avenue is a scary experience.

“There are so many students coming out of Richmond and other areas that attend Lord Byng. There’s a lot of traffic,” said Kim, adding cars still drive fast on West 16th Avenue during school hours.

Wong Chong and Kim are again calling for the installation of traffic lights, a stop sign or pedestrian-controlled lights at the crosswalk — measures that parents first advocated for after the January 2024 collision.

Following the collision that seriously injured the Lord Byng student, the city installed a painted crosswalk and concrete-bordered “islands” to reduce crossing distance, vehicle speed and traffic volume outside Lord Byng Secondary on West 16th Avenue.

The infrastructure prevents north and south vehicle crossings of West 16th via Wallace Street and Discovery Street. The speed limit on West 16th has also been reduced to 40 kilometres per hour from 50 km/h between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on school days.

Wong Chong and Kim say those changes don’t go far enough.

Between 2020 and 2024, there have been 278 vehicle crashes reported to ICBC on the 4 1/2 blocks of West 16th Avenue between Camosun Street and Dunbar Street, which includes Lord Byng Secondary.

“It’s a rising problem that we’ve heard from other schools as well,” Wong Chong said, adding they want lights or stop signs installed at all Vancouver school crossings.

Teen road safety advocates are often ignored because most can’t vote and don’t drive, says Margie Sanderson, director of organizing for the road safety group Vision Zero Vancouver.

But we should take their advocacy seriously, she told The Tyee.

“They’re one of the few populations that doesn’t have a stake in protecting driving,” Sanderson said.

Parents’ traffic safety fears result in driving their kids to school, increasing traffic around schools, she added.

“It’s creating this vicious cycle where there’s a ton of cars around pickup and drop-off time, and then parents feel like: ‘My kid can’t walk or bike in that, it’s crazy!’” Sanderson said.

School Streets and School Slow Zones

The Vancouver School Board, some private schools and the City of Vancouver have taken some school traffic safety steps.

For example, the School Slow Zones program has reduced speed limits to 40 km/h from 50 km/h on arterial roads, and to 30 km/h from 50 km/h on collector streets on school days between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at 39 public and independent schools, including Lord Byng.

The School Streets program, another collaboration between the city and the school district, closes one block of a school side street to all motor vehicle traffic during drop-off and pickup times.

This year just two Vancouver elementary schools are participating for the entire 2025-26 school year. Some other schools are participating for a couple of weeks or one day per week.

This idea isn’t unique to Vancouver, Sanderson told The Tyee. For example, Paris, France, has 200 “children’s streets” banning motor vehicles outside of elementary and nursery schools.

“They’re seeing major benefits in terms of air quality around the school and noise pollution inside the school,” she said.

So far 13 Vancouver schools have participated in School Streets since it was launched in 2021. According to the City of Vancouver’s 2025 report, 73 per cent of parents, 86 per cent of school staff and 98 per cent of students surveyed want the program to continue.

Kids don’t have the same anxieties around a loss of motor vehicle access that some parents and school staff do, Sanderson says, adding the city does a good job of ensuring schools still have some vehicle access for people who must drive.

‘Confusing’ communication with school district

Wong Chong and Kim tried to present their case for traffic lights or stop signs at school crosswalks to the Vancouver School Board last fall.

But their request was denied as the board does not have jurisdiction over day-to-day school district operations like crosswalk infrastructure.

Instead, communicating through their school principal, the district put Kim and Wong Chong in contact with facilities management staff, with whom they planned to meet on Jan. 13.

The students told The Tyee they felt like the district heard their road safety message and they do not hold a grudge against the board or staff. But it was a convoluted process.

“It was confusing with their communication,” Wong Chong said.

The students plan to contact the City of Vancouver to start a conversation about expanding traffic safety improvements to all schools in the city.

The Tyee requested an interview with Vancouver School Board superintendent Helen McGregor about student traffic safety advocacy, but she was not made available.

Instead a school district spokesperson told The Tyee via email that the school district worked closely with the city’s engineering department to improve traffic safety outside Lord Byng following the January 2024 accident.

“These changes aim to slow traffic and make vehicle movements more cautious, with a strong focus on pedestrian safety,” the district spokesperson told The Tyee via email.

“Additionally, the school has organized educational sessions for students to reinforce traffic and pedestrian safety.”

The spokesperson’s email contained a list of changes made to the intersection, which included a change The Tyee did not see when it visited the crosswalk in December: “adding a rapid flashing beacon for increased visibility.”

Responding to a followup email from The Tyee regarding the installation timeline, the district spokesperson wrote that the flashing beacon was not yet in place. The spokesperson did not provide information about when the flashing beacon will be installed, instead referring The Tyee to the City of Vancouver.