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Residents of East Vancouver’s Commercial Drive neighbourhood say they’re being swamped with traffic on side streets, just four days into the closure of 1st Avenue for gas line work.

The major arterial, which connects downtown Vancouver to Highway 1, is completely closed from Nanaimo Street to Clark Drive until the end of August while Fortis BC replaces aging infrastructure.

LISTEN: ‘Rat runners’ take over the neighbourhood



Craig Ollenberger with the Grandview Woodlands Area Council (GWAC) said that’s led to a surge in so-called “rat runners,” frustrated commuters looking for side street shortcuts to get around construction.

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“Kids are running around playing, not expecting a lot of traffic. It’s really concerning,” Ollenberger said.

“We always have a lot of rat running through the neighbourhood but it’s just gotten dramatically worse to a level I just wouldn’t have expected.”

Map of a closure along East 1st Avenue in Vancouver due to upgrades to a Fortis gas pipeline. Google Maps

Ollenberger claimed he’d seen upwards of 20 cars at a time waiting to “zip across” Commercial Drive or Victoria Drive to get ahead.

READ MORE: 11 blocks of East 1st Ave. will be closed in both directions for 10 weeks this summer

He said many in the neighbourhood are worried someone will get hurt.

“A lot of people in the neighbourhood are used to just enjoying their street. They don’t expect people to be racing through. And then on the flip side of that, all the people who are racing through aren’t used to this neighbourhood, don’t understand how we live,” he said.

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“[They] don’t understand necessarily that they can’t come flying through at 50 or 60 kilometres per hour — or even 30 or 40 for that matter — and expect nobody to come running out or just be behind a corner somewhere.”

Vancouver police on a side street near Commercial Drive, Friday, July 6. Simon Little / Global News

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) says it has increased its presence in the neighbourhood to “conduct targeted education and enforcement.”

The City of Vancouver says it is also monitoring the situation, and is using traffic counting in the area to try and curb “poor driving behaviour.”

A ‘local traffic only’ sign on Commercial Drive, Thursday, July 5. Simon Little / Global News

It has also installed “local traffic only” signs at intersections to residential neighbourhoods and banned right turns from Clark Drive onto 3rd Avenue.

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Additionally, the city says it’s asking Fortis BC to install a temporary median along Nanaimo street.

Fortis said it is trying to have the median installed by the end of next week.

“That’s going to be set up near Grant and Gravely Streets as well as East 2nd and East 3rd Avenue,” said spokesperson Trevor Wales.

“So what that will do is prevent people from turning left across Nanaimo and cutting through local neighbourhoods.”

For Ollenberger, it’s not enough. He said GWAC will be approaching the city to ask for more concrete measures to shut down the “rat runners” in the short term.

WATCH: 11 blocks of East 1st Avenue to be closed for 10 weeks this summer

2:03 11 blocks of East 1st Avenue to be closed for 10 weeks this summer 11 blocks of East 1st Avenue to be closed for 10 weeks this summer

In the long term, he wants to see permanent traffic calming of the type that already exists between Nanaimo Street and Victoria Drive installed in the rest of the neighbourhood.

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“What we’re having now, of course, is people going through the neighbourhood, and now they’re finding new routes through they’re likely to stick to when traffic gets bad on other routes, and that’s really bad as well.”