A pedestrian has died after a vehicle struck him on Highway 101 west of Gibsons late Friday evening.
Sunshine Coast RCMP confirmed a local male resident of the Sunshine Coast succumbed to his injuries on Dec. 7.
A vehicle travelling westbound on the highway near the Poplars neighbourhood struck the male, according to police.
The vehicle driver remained on scene and fully cooperated, said police. Police also noted in previous communications the heavy rain and dark conditions of the highway.
"We remind everyone to exercise heightened awareness during heavy inclement weather and low-visibility hours to help ensure the safety of all road users," said the press release.
Highway 101 was closed just west of Gibsons between 10:30 p.m. Dec. 6 and just after noon Dec. 7, while the Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service investigated.
Police have not shared the pedestrian’s identity or further details.
‘Enough is enough’
The incident has prompted calls for improved safety on a section of highway that has seen multiple fatalities in the past two decades, including a 12-year-old girl who was crossing from the bus stop to the Poplars in 2007, and an 86-year-old woman who was crossing from the bus stop at Oceanview Road in 2016.
The 1.5 kilometre section of highway west of the Town of Gibsons boundary from Chaster Creek to just beyond the cemetery has an 80 km/hr speed limit, three sets of bus stops, few street lights, and more than 300 residences on the south side of the highway.
Community member Kallie Lamoureux started a Change.org petition to install a pedestrian-controlled light across from the Poplars shortly after the incident. The petition has gathered more than 1,000 “signatures” in the past three days.
“It's such a dangerous area,” said Lamoureux, “One is too many accidents.”
After hearing the news of Friday’s incident, she decided there needed to be a petition, to “light the fire under the appropriate seats” and prompt action.
“Enough is enough, you know, time to do something about it,” she shared.
Letter to the minister
Monday, Gibsons Mayor Silas White sent a letter to Minister of Transportation and Transit Mike Farnworth to inform him of the person’s death and to share the urgent need for safety improvements along the highly populated section of highway.
White said Gibsons council members met with ministry staff last year, who shared that the ministry had drafted plans for safety improvements along the corridor running through and outside of Gibsons, set to be finalized in early 2025.
“Unfortunately, these efforts were not completed in time to prevent this latest death. To help avoid another tragedy we urge you to prioritize and expedite the finalization of this work and to fund its implementation as soon as possible, preferably in the 2024 budget but, if need be, as an immediate commitment in your 2025 budget,” said White.
White, speaking with Coast Reporter later, said he doesn’t want to prescribe solutions, recognizing the ministry has their own expertise. “I do understand they've had numerous staff looking at this very closely and determining what the best responses would be to ensure safety in that area."
Of the stretch of highway, White said, “Those are heavily populated areas where people actually have to cross the highway in order to get to and from the bus stop, which, I mean, everybody has to agree that's a really hazardous situation.’’
A longstanding concern
Since the Woodcreek Park Community Association’s inception in 2018, reducing the highway speed and having a crosswalk installed have been among their biggest concerns, said president Sandra Cunningham who has lived in the neighbourhood, which is half a kilometre west of the Poplars, since 2001. They’ve been advocating to the ministry with little success.
Cunningham also observed a dip in the road sometimes obscures vehicles, adding to the danger.
Bus access is a longstanding concern. The association has been trying to get bus shelters at the stops at Oceanview Drive (the entrance to Woodcreek Park), and the transit authority says there’s not enough transit use, according to Cunningham.
“To cross that street, you are taking your life in your hands. And who's going to let their kids do that?" She said. “Many of us would like to just take the bus down to the ferry, we would prefer to do that, but we won't, because we'd have to cross the highway when we come home."
Donna McMahon, Elphinstone area director for the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), said she hears from residents of Woodcreek Park that they’ve forbidden their children to ride the bus because it’s too dangerous. This danger is frustrating for a local government trying to promote use of its transit system. “This is not what I want to hear,” said McMahon.
A danger for kids
Grace Carter crosses the stretch of Highway 101 with her three children, the youngest of whom is six, twice a day. They walk from their home at Sunday Cider (a hundred metres west of Woodcreek Park on the Mt. Elphinstone side) to the school bus stop at the Lower Road intersection (on the cemetery side). “It is a really scary thing to do with three little kids,” she said.
After a while of “running and holding hands,” Carter resorted to buying a high visibility vest and stop sign. “Even when I don't actively stop traffic, I'll just have it up in case someone comes hurtling around the corner,” she said.
When there’s high traffic it can take a long time to be able to cross, so to make the bus in time, sometimes they have to cross halfway to the painted median and wait for a gap in the other direction. “The tricky thing with the crossing is timing the gap when cars are going 80 or even faster, like they come to you so quickly,” said Carter. “It’s like Frogger.
“That can be scary. You're standing in the middle of a highway with children.”
Critical link
For the Coast in general, this is a critical and busy stretch of highway, said McMahon. “If there is an accident in between Lower Road and Burton Road, it cuts off the Coast."
Friday’s accident was farther east, allowing a detour up Burton Road, but other accidents, such as a head-on collision between an SUV and commercial flatbed truck in September 2023 near Oceanview Drive, can close the through route to the ferry, sometimes for hours.
For the more than 300 units across the Poplars and Woodcreek Park, there’s no other access to Gibsons than through the highway, with an increasing number of homes on the opposite side of the highway, pointed out McMahon.
And with population growth and increased traffic, the amount of time it takes to get out of the subdivision is a safety risk, said Cunningham. “What happens is some people take a chance.”
The section of highway from Veterans Road to Roberts Creek Road was identified as a “Collision prone segment” in the 2020 Highway 101 Corridor Study, with Lower Road/Highland Road identified as one of 13 collision-prone locations. (The study used data from 2013 to 2017.)
The study recommended a southbound left-turn lane and southbound deceleration lane at Highway 101 and Lower Road/Highland Road (with an estimated capital cost of $925,000 at that time) and a short Gibsons bypass in the long term.
ICBC data (which the organization notes is incomplete and imperfect), shows 30 collisions on Highway 101 between the Chaster Creek bridge and the Lower Road intersection from 2019 to 2023. Eight of the incidents reported casualties –– injury or fatality.
This said, between 2019 and 2023, ICBC data shows no pedestrian-involved crashes.
Lower speed limit before crosswalk
Both McMahon and Cunningham say the Ministry of Transportation and Transit (until a month ago it was the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure), which has jurisdiction over all B.C. highways, won’t consider a crosswalk if the speed limit is 80 km/hr. The speed limit would need to be lowered to 60 before a crosswalk could be considered.
The general consensus among interviewees is to keep the speed limit 60 km/hr from Gibsons to beyond the Lower Road/Highland Road-Highway 101 intersection, where the school bus meets kids and traffic flows from Roberts Creek, as well as upper slope residences, onto a curve on the highway.
“That's sort of the first step. And then the next step would be pedestrian crosswalks at Wood Creek Park and Poplars,” said McMahon.
Some of McMahon’s concerns are more structural, in the deprioritization of pedestrians in ministry route design.
B.C.’s transportation networks are designed around motor vehicles and the government’s road design decisions are guided by what makes roads safest for motor vehicles, said McMahon.
“There's this tendency whenever there's a pedestrian accident to blame the pedestrian, you know, ‘Oh, the pedestrian was wearing the wrong clothes and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so they attracted the vehicles to hit them.’ And I really hate that, because the roads could be designed to be far safer, and they aren't.”
Amid some comments a pedestrian overpass should be installed, McMahon said she has gone looking around for examples of overpasses in B.C. that have been installed in other towns recently.
“Every single one of them is in a municipality,” she said. “We are on our own as unincorporated rural areas. We're just abandoned, is how I feel.”
While numbered highways are always the ministry’s jurisdiction, municipalities that have jurisdiction on either side of the highway have more leverage than unincorporated areas, said McMahon. “Our problems here are not alone,” she said. “A lot of areas on Vancouver Island have very similar challenges to us.”
While in the past there have been threats of placing vigilante placards or painting a crosswalk, among her crowd, Cunningham said she vetoed them. (Another group threatened to block the road.) “We don't want to do anything to distract drivers. This has to be done at the government level.”
“It was a rural highway when they put that speed in,” said Cunningham. “Now, they've allowed for development, but they haven't thought out maybe this isn't safe, having an 80 kilometre highway at the entrance of these homes.”
She hopes to meet with the Coast’s new MLA in the new year and hopefully to see more action.
Ministry responds
Coast Reporter requested an interview with the Ministry of Transportation and Transit, which they replied to with a statement Tuesday afternoon.
"The Ministry of Transportation and Transit’s thoughts are with all affected by the tragic incident," said the statement. "Safety is the number one priority for the Ministry of Transportation and Transit. Whenever there is a serious incident on B.C. highways, ministry staff work closely with local law enforcement as they investigate the circumstances. The ministry will consider any recommendations that may arise from the police investigation or coroners report.
"The ministry continually assesses safety along all provincial roads and highways throughout the province. Ministry engineers consider many factors when setting and reviewing speed limits, including traffic volumes, sight distances, adjacent development, number of accesses, features such as curves and slopes, safety history and driver behaviour," said the statement, adding when serious incidents occur, ministry staff "conduct a thorough review of the location including its condition, speed limit and nearby signs."
The ministry began a review of active transportation and pedestrian safety on the Coast in late summer, including highway speed limits, and the area where the accident occurred is within the review's scope, it said.
In the meantime, bouquets of flowers have started gathering at the bus stop across from the Poplars and the online petition for a pedestrian crossing gathers comments.
“I love a person who crosses here,” says one comment.
“Too many lives lost on this stretch of highway,” reads another of the dozens of echoing comments.
“It is long overdue.”
