Saskatoon councillors are set to vote on whether to conduct a safety audit of an intersection where a cyclist was killed after colliding with a truck in May.
Natasha Fox, 33, was biking at the intersection of Wiggins Avenue and College Drive on May 24 when she was killed in a collision with a cement truck. Two children were riding just behind Fox at the time of the crash.
Fox was a Catholic school teacher and an accomplished wrestler.
The aftermath of her death saw an outpouring of support from the city’s cycling community, with some decrying Saskatoon’s haphazard approach to active transportation.
A former student of the elementary school where Fox taught organized a protest in June, riding past the accident site and ending at the headquarters of the Saskatoon Police Service.
“I feel like now is like the perfect time to show the city and show the community that bikers deserve a spot on the road,” 17-year-old Lucy Stobbe said.
In the wake of Fox’s death, Ward 6 Councillor Cynthia Block tried to fast-track a motion to hire a third party to conduct a road safety audit at the intersection, but her fellow councillors pumped the brakes to give more time for a more “fulsome debate.”
“It’s not that I don’t see this as urgent, but I want to ensure that when these motions are before us we actually have the ability to consider as comprehensive information from admin as we possibly can as well as to hear feedback from the community,” Ward 7 Councillor Mairin Loewen said on May 31, when Block brought the motion forward.
On Wednesday, councillors will vote on the motion, which would draw $30,000 from the reserve for capital expenditures to pay for the audit.
The motion also asks administration to come up with a cost estimate to include an annual road safety audit program as part of the upcoming multi-year budget.
Letters of support from the city’s cycling community are included in this week’s council package. Many call for more dedicated cycling infrastructure.
“I’ve had close calls. I’ve had harassment, both from people on the street and people in vehicles. All I want is to safely get from home to work and back again, but for reasons I can’t quite fathom, this makes some people angry,” Anna Cole wrote in a June 21 letter to council.
Scott Wieting, a Kensington resident, says the city “desperately needs protected intersection at all bike route intersections, including the one where Natasha was killed.”
Wieting says he’s had two close calls in his daily commutes since Fox was killed.
“Both times when I had the green light, people ran the red light without stopping or looking to make right turns,” he said.
“Fortunately in both cases, once with a semi and once with a mini van, I saw they were not stopping so I stopped in time to avoid being run down.”
