A YEAR-ROUND SCHOOL STREET ON COMOX
Safer For Everyone, Quieter For The Neighbourhood

by Lucy Maloney
What do you love most about living in the West End? Is it the oasis of quiet, shady streets dotted with lovingly-tended gardens that transform into a riot of colour in spring? Is it the convenience of having shops and beaches and the world’s premier urban forest park within walking distance? Is it the lift you get from seeing familiar faces out and about on the streets and in the pocket parks when you step outside your door?

The School Street Program ensures safe and car-free access for students, parents, and cyclists.

The quiet serenity, the convenience, and the sense of community in the West End make it the best neighbourhood in the city. And the single biggest factor underpinning the very best things about the West End is... traffic calming. Yes, that’s right, traffic calming.

Traffic diverters, pocket parks, pedestrian plazas – all traffic calming. Traffic calming is the only thing standing between our quiet neighbourhood and lineups of rat-race-running North Shore commuters choking the neighbourhood as they drive between the bridges. Traffic calming creates quiet, free public spaces for West Enders to gather in and pass through. It lets us hear the birds singing instead of car engines revving and horns honking. The West End was the first neighbourhood in Vancouver to have traffic calming infrastructure installed, done in part to thwart the preferred driving routes of sex work customers in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Some of the quietest streets in the West End are designated cycling routes like Comox, Chilco, Haro, Bute and Cardero Streets. City engineers monitor traffic levels along AAA-rated routes (comfortable for All Ages and Abilities) to make sure the traffic diverters are having the desired effect. The City’s goal for AAA routes is to have fewer than 500 motor vehicles per day and 50 per hour, so that most people who cycle, scoot, and roll along the street will encounter less than one motor vehicle per block in the peak hour.

Comox Greenway, which runs past Lord Roberts Elementary School from Bidwell to Cardero Streets, is one such AAA route. The problem with schools is that instead of daily motor vehicle trips being evenly spread across the day, cars concentrate at drop off and pickup times, with parents jostling to drop their children as close as possible to the school. This means at the times of day when the safety of AAA routes are most needed by families travelling without a car, they are the most dangerous. It’s impossible to achieve the City’s traffic volume goals for AAA-rated routes next to schools without installing infrastructure that separates active transport users from motor vehicles.

Comox Greenway adjacent to Lord Roberts has been safe and welcoming for families arriving on foot, by bike or by scooter at drop off and pickup for the past two years through the City of Vancouver’s hugely successful School Street program, which closes one block of one street adjacent to a school to encourage active transport and create space for people.

Before the School Street program, Comox Greenway was chaotic, dangerous and unpleasant at school drop off and pickup times. Most Lord Roberts Elementary families already walked, scooted or cycled to school thanks to the relatively compact school catchment — a product of the density of our housing in the West End. However, these families who were trying to get to school outside a car were crammed onto the narrow foot paths surrounding the school and forced to run the gauntlet of dangerous intersections filled with motor vehicles.

The School Street transformed this block of Comox into a peaceful space for children to chase each other, parents to gather and passers-by to have plenty of room to walk or cycle past the school without being blocked by a line-up of cars. More parents feel safe allowing their older kids to walk to school unsupervised and letting their younger kids experience their first taste of independence, saying their farewells at the entry to the School Street and watching them proudly make their way alone or with a little friend down the street towards school. The number of parents dropping off and picking up students using e-scooters and e-cargo bikes has steadily increased. Wheelchair and mobility scooter users have plenty of room to move along the street, as do our regular dog-walking neighbours. The School Street barriers protect the marked crosswalks at either end of the block so families are safe from turning and reversing motor vehicles.

Traffic calming measures and the School Street Program help prevent scenarios such as this.

We know that the School Street is great for our kids. Walking, cycling and scooting to school increases children’s cardiorespiratory fitness, helps to develop their sense of autonomy and independence, improves their mental health, builds social skills and improves their performance at school. It benefits the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and traffic danger and noise around schools. It also builds community by getting more people out on the streets and increasing social ties.

Driving parents are well-accustomed to the Comox School Street, which has been running continuously since September 2021 with a core group of Lord Roberts parents and a few supportive community members sustaining the program. Very few parents, especially parents of younger students, have the time and flexibility to volunteer and it’s been difficult to recruit more than a handful of volunteers from the wider community. The end goal has always been permanent infrastructure rather than a program that relies on more than 15 volunteer hours every week on an ongoing basis. By the end of June volunteers (mainly busy parents) will have spent approximately 1,300 hours operating and administering the School Street.

Public consultation has started on the Comox Year-Round School Street, which will permanently open the block of Comox Greenway adjacent to the school to people by closing it to motor vehicles. Permanent barriers will be erected at the Bidwell and Cardero ends of the block, transforming it into something that might look like a pocket park or plaza.

A Year-Round School Street on Comox will provide desperately-needed outdoor public space for kids, families and passers-by. With new apartment towers being constructed all the time, it will provide additional open public space for current and new West Enders. Lord Roberts has the smallest outdoor space per student of any elementary school in the district — it is the third-largest elementary school in VSB39, but its 650 students make do with relatively small grounds. Lord Roberts has a single field and playground, a couple of fenced basketball courts and a picnic area, which are used intensively by the local community out of school hours — a community that largely dwells in tall apartment buildings and other multi-family housing.

This project is planned to be in place by the time school returns in September after the summer break, and the City of Vancouver is looking for input from West Enders about what we want to see in this new public open space. Murals and games could be painted on the street and extra public seating and community garden spaces may be provided, depending on the ideas that come in.

This block of Comox is perfectly suited to this project — every apartment building has rear access from Henshaw Lane. Delivery e-trikes, bike lane-scale snow plows, and food-delivery bike messengers have continued to have access during School Street hours throughout the two years the program has been running.

SeaBreeze Walk in Yaletown illustrates how a successful car-free street can work.

SeaBreeze Walk in Yaletown is a good example of an extremely successful car-free street. SeaBreeze Walk is part of the sea wall path and is permanently closed to motor vehicles.

Townhouse residents meet taxis/Ubers at the corner of Hornby or Howe Streets, delivery workers simply park near the corner and walk along SeaBreeze Walk to the front doors of the townhouses, and visitors who arrive by car park on the surrounding streets. Residents' homes are incredibly quiet in the absence of passing motor vehicles and there is no street noise louder than human voices and the occasional brief sounds of bike bells.

The Comox Year-Round School Street will enhance the peaceful serenity and sense of community that makes the West End so wonderful to live in. What do you want to see in this new community space? Send your ideas to the City at SchoolActiveTravel@vancouver.ca

Lucy Maloney is the chair of the Lord Roberts Elementary School
Parent Advisory Committee (PAC).