Edmonton's unscrambling Whyte Ave.

But as I covered in the last video, the city doesn't seem to be willing to admit that they're trading pedestrian safety for vehicle efficiency.

In documents now removed from the city website, they said that removing scrambles supported safer crossings. I talked to Natalie Lazurko, the city's Director of Transportation Planning and Design, about this.

  • Troy Pavlek

    Are scramble intersections, as a configuration, safer than standard intersections?

  • Natalie Lazurko

    I don't have the research at my fingers to say yes or no to that.

Well, I do. It's right here. There's literally a study done on these specific intersections which found that the scramble was safer.

A University of Alberta safety assessment of the Whyte Ave scrambles.
  • Natalie Lazurko

    I would say that because we're protecting the movements at the intersections here along Whyte Avenue, I would say they're relatively equally safe. … I'm not going to go and argue that point. I think that all of the components put together, they're essentially equal.

  • Troy Pavlek

    I guess I struggle with the communications exercise here, because city communications made it very clear five years ago that these were being added to enhance pedestrian safety, because they were safer than standard intersections. … What I'm struggling to understand is we don't seem to be agreeing on the framework that scramble intersections are safe.

  • Natalie Lazurko

    There's multiple different ways that you can ensure that pedestrians are safe, and we wouldn't do anything that's unsafe. So certainly scrambles are one way to ensure that busy pedestrian intersections are safe, but the measures that we're putting into place here with the transit priority measures and those curb bulb-outs, all of those things combined also protect the safety of the users there.

You ever watch those clips of congressional hearings and just find yourself screaming at the screen? Just answer the question. Yes or no.

Apropos of nothing, of course.

  • Troy Pavlek

    We've shortened the crossing distance, we've made pedestrians safer, and traffic can turn right on green across pedestrian paths. If it was a scramble intersection, traffic wouldn't be able to do that. In this hypothetical situation where we've extended the curbs, would a scramble be more or less safe for pedestrians?

  • long, uncomfortable silence
  • Natalie Lazurko

    I… I… I understand where you're coming from there. Yes.

  • Troy Pavlek

    Yeah.

The full interview

You can watch the full 18-minute interview on my YouTube channel.

Have a great day, and a great life.

Try not to get scrambled in a crossing.

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