Pedestrians cross the busy intersection at King Edward Avenue and Rideau Street.
Some Centretown intersections, such as Booth and Somerset Streets, have been identified as difficult crossings for many elderly pedestrians, due to high volumes of traffic and short crossing allowance times, according to a University of Ottawa study on senior walkability in Ottawa.
Theresa Grant, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and a part-time physiotherapist at the Elizabeth Bruyere Hospital, is behind the study titled Neighbourhood Walkability: Seniors Perspectives from Four Neighbourhoods in Ottawa. She presented the results of the first phase on March 11.
Grant says she interviewed 75 seniors from various economic backgrounds living in four Ottawa neighbourhoods – two urban and two suburban – about the safety of walking in their neighbourhoods.
She also looked at other factors that contribute to their walking experiences in the Glebe, west Centretown, Carlington and Beaverbrook.
“The ability to move quickly declines with age as does the ability to judge how fast cars are coming at you and the distance they are away from you,” she says. “That makes it difficult to cross without a light guiding your safe crossing.”
Ottawa’s 2009 proposed Pedestrian Plan has identified King Edward Avenue and Rideau Street as having the highest collision frequency between 2004 and 2006.
Of the total number of all collisions in Ottawa in those years, 23 per cent involved vehicles that failed to yield to crossing pedestrians who had the right-of-way. And 11 per cent involved a pedestrian crossing the street without the right-of-way or running directly into the street.
There have been 10 collisions at nine uncontrolled intersections within the last two years, according to the city’s proposed plan.
To improve these numbers, the city proposes improving right-turning lanes to make them safer for pedestrians, says Wilson.
The urban smart channel concept requires longer lanes built that will allow vehicles to slow down faster as they approach the turn, and the corners will be cut into smoother, rounder edges.
“This reduces the angle upon which cars enter the intersection so that drivers don’t have to strain their heads too far left, so they have a wider range of vision to see pedestrians more quickly,” says Wilson.
Grant’s interview results show that many seniors say they will not cross an intersection where there is no light, like the one at Empress and Albert Streets that many seniors take from the Good Companions Senior Centre to the OC Transpo bus stop, says Grant.
Many Centretown senior pedestrians feel unsafe at these intersections because they must wait for a gap in the traffic and rely on their often poor judgement to determine how far away and how fast vehicles are.
Grant says this is the main reason for pedestrian collisions.
“When they see the light starting to flash, often there is a sense of urgency associated with the rest of the crossing, so they get the message ‘oh I better hurry up,’” says Grant. “And that often predisposes people to trip on something and fall.”
Some seniors, such as the members of the Ottawa Seniors Action Network, say the city could help alleviate the problem by making traffic light crossing allowances longer than the current 1.2 meters per second walking speed average.
OSAN is concerned about various issues for seniors in the downtown core and has lobbied the city to lengthen light times at certain intersections including King Edward and Rideau Streets, says Grant.
The city is not planning to increase the time allowance at pedestrian crossings, but Wilson says Ottawa’s primary initiative is to replace all pedestrian crossing lights with countdown signals.
“That helps people who are crossing the streets have the ability to gauge their time and how much time they have left to cross the street.”
According to City of Ottawa statistics, between 1998 and 2007, 14 per cent of the 207 collisions in west Centretown involved seniors, the highest number from the four neighbourhoods Grant studied.
The Glebe has the second highest number of collisions involving seniors with 11 per cent of 113, said Grant.
Commissioner’s Park is a popular walking spot for seniors, but the crossing at Queen Elizabeth Drive and Preston Street that links to it has been identified by Grant’s study subjects as another problem intersection in Centretown.