Here are the most dangerous intersections in St. John's, according to the city

The City of St. John's has broken down five years of collision data foritsstreets and has outlined its most dangerous intersections.

At the top of the list was Goldstone Street at Thorburn Road and Seaborn Street, with a total of 43 collisions and a 35 per cent rate of injury.

At second place was Higgins Line andPortugal Cove Road at Newfoundland Drive, with far more collisions 76 and a 41 per cent injury rate.

Third place isRawlins Cross, with 56 collisions and a 41 per centinjury rate.

Amer Afridi, the city'stransportation division manager, explainedthe Goldstone Street intersection outranked Higgins Line because ofthe frequency of vehicles driving through the area.

"We are trying to dig deep down into the collisions that are reported in the provincial database," Afridi told CBC News on Tuesday.

"That will provide us, in a snapshot, to go after the hotspots within the city. It will provide us the ranking that we have done for intersectionsand also ranking for the mid-block as well as pedestrian and cyclist collisions."

The report covered a five-year period from Jan.1, 2018, to Dec.31, 2022, with the data comingfrom the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistical Agency. It looked at intersections and mid-blocks road segments between two intersections including those involving pedestrians and cyclists.

In that five-year period there were 6,566 reported collisions, of which 47 per cent were at intersections and had a higher chance of resulting in injury. There were 354 pedestrian- and 69 cyclist-related reported collisions in St. John's.

In terms of the national average, Afridi said the city has a 3.3 per cent average annual fatal collisions per 100,000 population. The national average is 4.7 per cent and the provincial average is 6.7 per cent.

"This report, in a nutshell, tells us that OK, we are doing OK, but still there is room for improvement and we are striving for that in order to pinpoint the high crash locations within the city and see what improvements we can do in moving forward," said Afirdi.

When it came to ranking mid-block locations, Kelsey Drive between Kiwanis Street and Messenger Drive was ranked the most dangerous of its kind.

The other top contenders were Kenmount Road between the Avalon Mall parkinglot and Peet Street, and Torbay Road between the Trans-Canada Highway and Stavanger Drive.

The report found that the most common collision for mid-blocks was rear-end collisions, followed by hitting a parked car.

Council approved

The report was tabled Coun. Sandy Hickman duringTuesday afternoon's meeting of the committee of the whole, whichvoted 11-0 to approvecollision reports beingtabledevery three years instead of annually.

The committee also approved the next step:letting city staff carry out an assessment of the higher collision risk sites, which could lead to design improvements.

Mayor Danny Breen raised the issue of enforcement of road rules and the potential future use of traffic cameras, adding that a pilot project report is going to be released soon.

"I hope that it gets dealt with soon so we can move forward on this. It's going to make a big difference in terms of the safety in the city, and the increased enforcement will be well received by the public in making our roads safer," said Breen.

Environmental conditions were also captured in the report, which found 61 per cent of collisions happened when the weather was fine, with 18 per cent taking place during overcast weather, 10 per cent when it was rainingand seven per cent when snowing.

Coun. Maggie Burton said she found that detail interesting because it "wasn't what you would think."

Burton also hoped that the city would be able to quickly act on tackling the identified locations rather than commissioning more studies.

Improvements coming

Afridi said work is already underway to make some of those listed areas safer for people, like atKelsey Drive and Hamlyn Road.

For instance, he said the data noted that left turns have higher rates of collision so the city is creating plans to update the Goldstone intersection. The designs should be completed by mid-2024, though he couldn't say when those changes could be implemented.

In a past report, Rawlins Cross a hub which connects several downtown streets topped the city's list of collision heavy intersections.

In the most recent report, it was ranked third.

Rawlins Cross was the site of a pilot project thatstarted in 2018 and saw the introduction of a makeshift roundabout and yield signs.Accidents had dropped nearly 53 per cent.

City staff recommended making the changes permanent, residents signed apetition asking that the changes be reversed, citing pedestrian concerns,and council voted to scrap the makeshift roundabout and turn the traffic lights back on in late March 2020.

Afridi said the city is still looking at making improvements at Rawlins Cross, which he called challenging because of the number of streets that leadinto it, like Queen's Road, Flavin, Prescott Street and Rennie's Mill Road.

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