HALIFAX—Martyn Williams refers to his work as an advocate for pedestrian safety in Halifax as an “obsessive compulsive thing.”

Williams and his family moved from Bristol, England to Halifax in the summer of 2016 and about a year later the father of two started the group HRM Safe Streets for Everyone.

Most days, you can find Williams on social media pointing out incidents involving pedestrians and cyclists who may have been hit by cars, and how these collisions could have been avoided with “simple” infrastructure changes.

Williams, who is this week’s guest editor for Star Halifax, said he and his family walk most places around the city, so it quickly became evident to him how unsafe the streets were for pedestrians. Now, he spends a lot of his free time promoting pedestrian safety and pushing for changes to how streets are designed that would make them safer for those who walk or cycle.

“I have never really enjoyed using cars much, so I arrived here with two children and we tend to walk everywhere,” he said of his family. “If they have their piano lesson, we walk to it. It’s about a mile. And those journeys get very stressful when you’re exposed to danger.”

This danger is what Williams said prompted him to start the group, as he had taken safe pedestrian infrastructure for granted living in England.

“Through the annoyance really and the fear of situations that I get into here ... I guess (I started this through) pure aggravation at not having the safety that I’ve had elsewhere.”

In your column you refer to this issue as a “road safety crisis.” Why did you choose that phrase?

For me, it’s very clearly a crisis. We’ve had eight pedestrian fatalities since January of 2018. I think the youngest of those fatalities was 54 ... and just the nature of the fatalities and how they happened. A lot of them were on artery roads, people trying to cross where there was no infrastructure. There is walking here, but there’s no consideration to people who are cycling and walking and how they can do that safely. Yet, people have to do it ... And when they can’t get about safely through the most fundamental form of transport there is, and that’s causing constant serious injuries and fatalities, that to me is a crisis, not a problem.

How would you respond to people saying pedestrians are the problem, not just drivers, when it comes to these types of collisions?

You can see why people say that. Often people are struggling. Right where I live, there is an unmarked crosswalk across four lanes of traffic. People use it to try to get to the bus stop, the bank. You can’t get across a four-lane road that quickly and people come bumbling down at 70, 80 kilometres per hour. They have to stop very suddenly sometimes. So you can understand why people think pedestrians are the issue, because they can see they’re doing dangerous things. But in fact, that’s just part of walking mobility. People don’t take huge detours for crosswalks. It just doesn’t happen. Yet people expect pedestrians to do that. Perhaps they don’t walk themselves.

So whose mindset needs to change? Or do we just need more infrastructure?

Drivers aren’t going to change. Pedestrians aren’t going to change. Drivers are going to use highway style roads like highways. Pedestrians are going to try and cross them and not take huge detours. It’s totally an infrastructure issue.”

Why hasn’t this issue resulted in more action from the municipality? Is it because of money?

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There seems to be a culture here where driving infrastructure is seen as primarily important for people to get about. That’s where most of the investment goes. While there is more awareness now, supporting active transport, we don’t have the tools in place to change things around. Certainly, not to impact the more dangerous roads that we have. I think the issue mainly is we’re dealing with very archaic, very old-fashioned infrastructure priorities. We haven’t really even begun our journey worth turning that around and trying to effect a more balanced road infrastructure — which accommodates everybody and not just mainly driver’s needs.

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Can our current Halifax streets be designed safer?

Yes, absolutely. There are much more simple things than people might imagine. It’s just reallocating space ... it could be just changing a four-lane highway style roadway into a two or three-lane road, then just giving up space for say a wide cycle lane, or not even necessarily extending sidewalks, just reallocating space so that traffic isn’t moving so quickly and there’s less space for pedestrians to cross.

Some answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

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