From Preston Schiller at Queen’s University:
A few years ago, as part of my Sustainable Transportation course at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON) I gave the students the assignment of studying the major intersection of two arterial streets on campus: Union & University Streets. I had been observing this intersection ever since I arrived there several years ago and I believed that the City of Kingston Public Works Division had not done justice to the pedestrians who were its primary users in a recent redesign that still stressed the primacy of motor vehicles.
Two students, Kris & Carolyn, wanted to do a video that would dramatize the class findings (that pedestrians were the primary users of the intersection) and we went through the arduous process of their gaining permission to go out on the roof of the Engineering Library (appropriately!) to do their video.
We also showed the video in a class presentation at the end of the term attended by several officials of the City of Kingston and Queen’s University.
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Update from Preston: I learned that just very recently the City of Kingston, with support from Queen’s U. relatively new (5 years?) Principal, is planning to change that intersection to a pedestrian scramble in 2015-16.
The video, visualizing and summarizing the data collected by many students at that intersection was part of a class presentation to several community leaders and City of Kingston officials in Spring, 2010. Evidently it stuck in the minds of several present then so that it came up at an opportune time a few years later. Also, Jeremy da Costa, the manager for Kingston Transit, (who was in attendance at the 2010 presentation) has been bringing a similar video of a pedestrian scramble in Toronto to the attention of many of the same persons.
I am hopeful that changing this intersection will lead to changing several other pedestrian-dominated intersections in the downtown. The City’s Engineering Dept. is pretty much stuck in asphalt and “cars first” thinking, so we will see how faithfully they will carry out this initiative and how well the Council and pro-pedestrian interests will keep following it.
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The video is worth watching just for production techniques and quality – and the impact student work can have on decision-makers.
Well done!