Article content

City councillors made the wrong choice when it came to the High Level Bridge suicide barrier.

They went with the less expensive option, but also the less effective. Just how ineffective the $3-million barrier is will only be known in a few years when we have more evidence about suicide attempts there, but the early returns are worrisome.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or David Staples: Council should have paid for superior suicide barrier on High Level Back to video

The barrier is evidently porous. Folks can jump over it from the top streetcar platform. They can also get on the outside of the new barrier by climbing on it from either end of the bridge or wriggle up between the new barrier and old guardrail in spots.

They might even be able to scale the barrier, as evidently happened Sunday. Police said a woman climbed up the barrier and jumped. She survived the plunge with no obvious physical injuries.

“We’ve had people scale the (black railing) and now scale the barriers,” city police Insp. Regan James said. “We’ve caught people up on top where the train trestle is attempting (to jump) from there … How are you going to stop people from finding a high place and jumping? It’s a pretty tough problem to solve.”