A Port Moody resident is renewing her call for traffic calming at the bottom of Gatensbury Road after a car crashed into an embankment Monday afternoon.
"If you don't do traffic calming on the entire road, you will have people speeding," said Lori Holdenried, who lives at at 1019 Gatensbury Rd.
Police are continuing to interview witnesses to find how the late-afternoon accident happened.
But to Holdenried, the crash confirms her concerns about safety problems with the route.
Holdenried, who is part of the Facebook group Gatensbury Residents for Road Safety, said cars speed up and down the road, and a study conducted last year by PoMo police backs her claim.
She said she is disappointed the city didn't follow up on a residents' request for traffic calming on lower Gatensbury in 2012, although it did prohibit commercial truck traffic and install centre line delineators on curvier stretches further up the road in 2011.
"There have been multiple requests and recommendations for traffic calming — for example a meridian, that would have prevented her from crossing the road," Holdenried said.
The city's explanation for not adding more centre line delineators further down the hill was that they could introduce new hazards and there are fewer curves and better visibility on that stretch of road.
But safety issues will get a second look, Mayor Mike Clay says, when a nearly $3-million water and storm main project gets underway in 2018. Although it still needs final approval, Clay said the project would include a sidewalk on one side of the road, road reconstruction with improved cambering at some of the curves, and when the street is dug up, engineers will be looking to improve traffic safety.
In the meantime, he said, people have to use common sense when driving down a steep hill with narrow shoulders.
"That's a very unsafe place to decide to speed. When people go off the road, it's miraculous we haven't had more harm to people and to property."
