Vancouver Parties Split on Making Roads Safer

As Vancouver residents head to the polls for the municipal election, advocacy group Vision Zero is focused on making road safety an election issue.

In 2023, there were 7,345 crashes that resulted in death or injury in Vancouver. In 2024, there were 7,697, according to data from ICBC.

From 2022 to 2024, 22 of the 36 car crash fatalities in Vancouver were pedestrians, according to ICBC.

Over the last few years the city has addressed the issue. This includes reducing speeds from 50 km/h to 30 km/h on residential streets in certain Vancouver neighbourhoods and overhauling the city’s action plan to achieve zero traffic-related injuries and deaths, also known as the Vision Zero plan, last year.

Despite these actions, in 2025, there were 7,610 traffic-related injuries or deaths in the city.

Margie Sanderson, the director of organizing for Vision Zero Vancouver, attributed the lack of progress to the slower rollout of new road safety infrastructure in recent years.

“Vancouver is falling behind on some of these rankings like cycling safety and things that we previously had ranked higher on,” said Sanderson. “In the last four years under this council, we saw the city really move backwards on this issue.”

Sanderson says ABC, the party that currently holds a majority on council, has either amended or rejected key parts of motions related to road safety, making them less effective.

“The ABC majority really rejected a lot of important road safety measures,” said Sanderson. “We often saw [them] send it back for more study or amend it to be just a report from staff.”

Sanderson pointed to an example from June, when ABC councillors voted to amend a part of the Vision Zero plan that would have reduced speeds on major roads like Robson, Denman and Davie.

City Coun. Lisa Dominato, who is running for re-election with ABC, pushed back against Vision Zero’s criticism. Dominato said the party continues to work on road safety throughout the city.

“I think we have to strike a balance in the city,” said Dominato. “While we want to make sure that pedestrians and cyclists are safe on our streets, we also need to continue to support the movement of goods and people on our streets as well.”

City Coun. Lucy Maloney, who is running for re-election with OneCity, spearheaded the Vision Zero motion last year. She says ABC’s amendments and lack of funding are why attempts to improve road safety haven’t made a significant difference in road accidents.

“A city’s priorities are obviously expressed clearly in where it allocates its investment to,” said Maloney. “You can say all the nice words that you want and have all the world-leading policies, but unless you’re financing them, they happen either not at all or too slowly to make an appreciable difference.”

What the parties are promising

This election period, Maloney and her party OneCity’s safe mobility platform includes building a connected walking and cycling network, reducing speeds on shopping streets and near parks and schools, creating a Vision Zero rapid response fund and expanding facilities for active transport. OneCity is not running a mayoral candidate, but have five city council candidates, five school trustee candidates and five park board commissioner candidates.

OneCity has also promised to direct initial road safety investments to neighbourhoods that are the furthest behind. Maloney suggested these neighbourhoods would be in South and East Vancouver.

“We need traffic calming infrastructure, and we need cycling routes, and we need more sidewalks and curb cuts to make them more accessible,” said Maloney.

In addition to their platform, OneCity has also endorsed Vision Zero’s 10 actions to improve road safety in their first year.

The actions include eliminating time and day restrictions for all Vancouver school zones, reversing the “zero means zero” budget policy on transportation and road safety and lower speeds on select major roads.

COPE, the Green Party, Vancouver Liberals and Vote Vancouver have also endorsed Vision Zero’s 10 actions.

Team for a Livable Vancouver and ABC are the only major parties who have not endorsed their first-year list of requests, Sanderson said.

Even though they are not endorsing Vision Zero’s requests, Team for a Livable Vancouver and ABC do have promises related to road safety.

Currently, Team for a Livable Vancouver’s road safety platform promises to improve sidewalks, reduce speed limits and have secure bike storage near transit and schools. They also suggest prohibiting “non-vehicular traffic on major arteries and bus routes when there is a defined cycling / rolling route nearby” and will “review contentious projects such as the Granville Bridge Connector, the Stanley Park and Beach Avenue bike lanes, traffic lane closures.”

ABC’s platform, promises to rebuild and repair roads and sidewalks.

Dominato said ABC made a number of investments in road safety over the past four years. This includes increasing the number of flashing beacons and pedestrian signals, new marked crosswalks, curb ramps and allocating $180 million towards road safety and mobility, as well as $104 million in increased investment in streets and sidewalks in the 2027-2030 capital plan.

“I think our track record speaks for itself in terms of the different measures that we’re implementing across the city,” said Dominato. “But also, that we’re putting the money behind it too that speaks volumes.”

Removing the banana barriers

In addition to their initial platforms, ABC and Team for a Livable Vancouver have both promised to take action on the divisive traffic calming infrastructure known as “banana barriers” in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood.

The banana barriers were rolled out into streets in Vancouver starting in 2020, as part of the city’s slow streets initiative.

While some citizens have appreciated the barriers, other residents at Hastings-Sunrise are calling on the city to remove them, saying that the barriers have displaced traffic and frustrated drivers. The petition advocating for the removal has almost 3,000 signatures.

In response to the petition, Team for a Livable Vancouver announced in a press release in early September that they would address these concerns and re-examine traffic safety measures. They also promised to find a better way to handle non-local traffic.

Last week, ABC announced a similar plan, promising to remove the recently added banana barriers, restore parking and keep other traffic calming initiatives like speed humps, crossings, enforcement and lower posted limits “where they make sense.” At a recent ABC telephone town hall, several residents called in to complain about vehicle access issues like speed bumps in their neighbourhood or poor-quality roads.

Vision Zero advocate Sanderson said that getting rid of the barriers would move neighbourhoods backwards in traffic calming efforts. Instead, she said the city could update the barriers to something that can work for everyone.

“If we simply go with, ‘OK, some people are mad about this. Let’s rip it all out and never do it again, and never touch that political hot potato,’” said Sanderson. “Then we are not going to get to the other side of whatever growing pains there might be to a better functioning and successful project.”

Maloney said that as a city councillor, a better course of action would be to take the neighbourhoods’ comments to city staff and provide updates to the residents who made the complaints.

“To promise to take out traffic calming infrastructure, which is there to protect our children, our seniors and anybody that’s trying to navigate their neighbourhoods outside a car, is at best grossly irresponsible,” said Maloney.

Dominato told The Tyee that ABC’s plan would be to review the banana barriers with the city’s engineering department and then take action.

In their press release, ABC has also said that they would ensure that council would have more oversight over major changes instead of leaving road design decisions to city staff.

“Councillors have observed that there are engineering works that are introduced that the public or residents have concerns over, or didn’t make a lot of sense,” said Dominato. “At the end of the day, council is accountable to the public, to the taxpayers, to the voters. We’ve had very little say in how those things are implemented.”

Vision Zero Vancouver is concerned about ABC’s plan to bring road design decisions before council. Sanderson said that would make it even harder to implement road safety plans in the future.

“It basically welcomes a culture war to take place about cycling and driving and pitting these things against each other,” said Sanderson. “And trying to get the loudest voice at council over every single road safety upgrade, as opposed to following a well-researched, well-planned, evidence-based project.”

Road safety beyond infrastructure

While party platforms are an important factor in this election, Sanderson is also concerned about individual candidates’ actions.

Earlier this month ABC school board trustee candidate Lina Vargas posted a video on her Instagram story reminding people to get out and vote. In the video, Vargas is talking to the camera while driving a vehicle.

In response to the video, Vision Zero took to social media to call out Vargas. “Distraction is the second leading cause of fatal crashes in our region and province,” it said. “We hope that all candidates take that seriously, especially those from a party campaigning on public safety.”

Sanderson says that initially Vision Zero Vancouver reached out to Vargas directly to gain clarity on the matter, after receiving no response they posted on social media.

“Distracted driving is the second leading cause of fatal crashes in the province,” said Sanderson. “It’s something that is so normalized that we see someone who is running for elected office [who] seems to us doesn’t even think twice about posting this video of herself doing exactly that.”

Vision Zero Vancouver has not heard back from Vargas regarding the video. Vargas declined to comment for this story.

Ultimately, in this election Sanderson says that people need to consider road safety as part of their public safety.

“If we’re talking about public safety, let’s look at what’s causing preventable injury and death in our city,” said Sanderson. “The biggest source is car crashes. So, I think it’s vital that parties be talking about this.”