City asks for urgent $1M as Calgary pedestrian deaths increased 225% last year

Karina Zapata · CBC News

· Posted: May 08, 2025 6:06 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

Last twelvemonth marked an 11-year precocious for fatal collisions successful Calgary — including a 225 per cent summation successful pedestrian deaths — according to an yearly metropolis study presented to council's assemblage improvement committee connected Thursday.

According to the safer mobility program report, 29 radical died successful collisions successful 2024. A erstwhile Calgary Police Service study said that's the highest fig since 2013. Of those deaths, 13 were pedestrians.

While the metropolis noted pedestrian injuries person been expanding crossed Canada since 2021, Calgary's collision rates are consistently higher than the rates of different large cities, said the report.

The city's mobility squad cited a fig of imaginable reasons, including colonisation growth, caller and inexperienced drivers and a deficiency of mobility information backing compared to different jurisdictions.

"These investments scope from astir $50 cardinal per twelvemonth successful Edmonton to $80 million per twelvemonth successful Toronto, said the report.

Calgary spends $5 cardinal annually connected mobility information initiatives.

The committee unanimously approved the petition for an further $1 cardinal from the fiscal stableness reserve — the city's rainy time money — to marque urgent improvements to postulation safety, including much velocity humps and intersection work. It besides agreed to marque mobility information backing a precedence during fund talks successful November.

The last determination connected that backing volition beryllium made by metropolis assembly aboriginal this month.

Bolder moves

Kimberley Nelson, committee seat for the non-profit enactment Youth En Route and a long-time roads information advocator successful Calgary, called 2024 a "horrific year," adding 2025 is already disconnected to a shaky start.

The rising fatality figures travel 1 time aft the nationalist learned a teenage skateboarder had died aft colliding with an SUV last week.

"These are preventable incidents. We cognize wherefore they hap and we're conscionable not putting the resources to hole it," said Nelson.

"It's going to instrumentality time, it's going to instrumentality resources and it's decidedly going to instrumentality a batch of volition from assembly to crook this around. We request to marque everybody safer."

Nelson said she wants to spot the metropolis marque bolder moves erstwhile it comes to improving postulation safety, specified arsenic lowering velocity limits successful residential areas to 30 km/h — adjacent if it comes with pushback from drivers who are disquieted astir their commutes.

$1M? Not enough, accidental immoderate councillors

At the committee meeting, immoderate councillors said the metropolis should beryllium seeking more than $1 cardinal this year, fixed the summation successful fatalities crossed the city.

Coun. Raj Dhaliwal praised the mobility squad for the enactment they're doing, contempt their deficiency of resources.

"I inactive consciousness that we request to beryllium precise honorable — personally, maine — that you guys request much resources. Because our roadways request to beryllium safe.… Many radical bash not consciousness safe, particularly astir playgrounds, schools," said Dhaliwal, who represents Ward 5.

Ward 12 Coun. Evan Spencer said limiting this concern to one-time backing is simply a mistake.

"Council, we've got to get superior astir putting backing [forward] for these sorts of high-priority [issues].… We request to enactment this into base."

Coun. Courtney Walcott chairs the committee. The Ward 8 typical said 1 of the challenges with implementing traffic-calming measures is the pushback from Calgarians whose commutes are affected.

"We person to marque a values determination astir what's much important to america and however accelerated we rotation it out, and the world is, I ever autumn connected the broadside of postulation safety. So, if I could, I would ever springiness more. But that has ne'er been a unanimous Calgarian decision," said Walcott.

If the backing is approved by council, helium said helium hopes it reduces the fig of fatalities successful Calgary this year. And if it does, helium said helium wants Calgarians to retrieve that's wherefore this enactment is important.

"There's a crushed wherefore we're asking you to thrust slower, and it's truthful we don't person the twelvemonth we had past year."