City councillor, grieving mother call for action on Gladstone Avenue bike lanes
© Provided by Ottawa Citizen Nicole Grindell, whose son was killed 20 years ago at the corner of Gladstone Avenue and Rochester Street, the same site of a collision last week that left a female cyclist critically injured victim. Grindell was photographed at her home in Bonnechere Valley Sunday.Somerset Ward Coun. Ariel Troster is calling on city council to immediately install new barriers on Gladstone Avenue to make the street safer for cyclists.
Gladstone, she said, is an official truck route in Ottawa even though it’s also on many cycling maps.
“We need to throw down a quick build to make the street safer until we can do the studies required for a complete realignment,” Troster said in an interview. “For a street that dangerous, I don’t want to just see flex posts: I want to see concrete barriers.”
She said the city also needs to urgently consider whether to ban right-hand turns on red lights at Gladstone and Rochester Street, and on other intersections nearby.
“Should we be banning right on red? I think we should,” she said.
Troster made her comments two days after a female cyclist suffered life-threatening injuries when she was knocked from her bike by a dump truck at the corner of Gladstone and Rochester. Troster said her latest information is that the woman remains in critical condition.
Her name has not been released.
Ottawa police are investigating the collision, which took place Friday at 7:43 a.m. Investigators have asked anyone who witnessed the crash or any driver with dashcam footage to contact police.
Nicole Grindell, 62, said she was horrified when she read about the collision because her son, Jean-Pierre Morin, was killed at the same intersection on Sept. 18, 2002.
“It rocked me to my core,” Grindell said of the latest collision. “I don’t speak out about a lot of things, but I couldn’t not say anything about this. How many people have to die before we do something about this?”
Her son was 18 years old, she said, when he was struck by an eastbound truck that turned right in front of him as he pedalled east on Gladstone. He was crushed underneath the gravel truck, which was hauling contaminated waste from a construction site at LeBreton Flats.
“They had to bring in a crane to lift the truck off my son,” she said.
The collision happened two days after her son’s birthday, Grindell said, as he was biking to Adult High School on Rochester Street. No charges were laid in the incident. Jean-Pierre was a “great kid,” she said, who loved camping and being outdoors; he was going back to high school to get his diploma and pursue a career in the trades.
“To see that it happened again at the same spot made me convinced something needs to change. What are trucks doing going through there?” Grindell asked. “How can we be running dump trucks on the same street as bicycles?”
Earlier this year, Ottawa city council approved a plan to study the feasibility of adding cycling infrastructure on Gladstone between Percy Steet and the Trillium Line LRT station now under construction, Corso Italia Station.
Troster said Sunday she’s not willing to wait for the feasibility study to report.
“I don’t think we can hem and haw,” she said. “We need to talk to city staff now about what changes we can implement immediately, and get it done.”
Within a block of the crash site, she said, there’s a daycare, a church and a school, and more bike traffic will soon be brought to the area by new housing developments and the LRT.
“It’s a major road and it has tonnes of residential development there, and it’s really, really dangerous,” said Troster, who has already reached out to Coun. Tim Tierney, chair of the city’s transportation committee.
“We’re going to start working on this on Monday,” she vowed. “I’m totally devastated that it takes a tragic accident to get things moving, but we have the potential for a lot more tragedy if we are not proactive.”
Troster also called for provincial legislation to mandate truck side guards — equipment that can prevent cyclists and pedestrians from getting lodged beneath trucks.
© Ashley Fraser A tattoo on Nicolle Grindell’s forearm commemorates the death of her son, Jean-Pierre Morin, 20 years ago when his bike was struck by a truck at the corner of Gladstone Avenue and Rochester Street.