Participants at the Vancouver Marathon last Sunday encountered something unusual during the race: a stop sign.

Oscar Brain, a Seattle resident who has run the race nine times, shot a video (above) that shows a police officer instructing runners to stop before an intersection to allow vehicle traffic through. Brain said this occurred every 90 seconds to two minutes, and the stops lasted up to 45 seconds.

Two intersections—49th and Oak Street, near mile two, and 49th and Granville Street, about four blocks later—were included in the video. Both serve as major arteries through the city.

Last year, Brain ran the race and said he was nearly stopped himself.

“I saw people ahead of me stopped, and at first, I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’” Brain told Runner's World Newswire. “I decided I didn’t want to stop and just dash across all six lanes of Granville, but then they opened it by the time I got there.”

The incident spurred Brain to return this year as a spectator and catch what he experienced on film.

“Stopping the marathoners—even if you give the time back—is really messed up,” said Brain, who noticed others had similar episodes based on reviews from marathonguide.com.

Charlene Krepiakevich, the executive director of the marathon, said that traffic control procedures at the two intersections did not go according to plan in 2015.

“The plan called for a controlled intersection,” Krepiakevich told Newswire. “Only buses, taxis, and emergency vehicles are supposed to cross at specific times factoring in the estimated pace times of runners from the start line corrals. All other traffic is supposed to be diverted. For residents in the area, or if some local cars are caught in the queue, we would allow them to cross with the buses. This is the exception, not the norm, however.”

Krepiakevich said that, in past years, about 85 percent of 5,000 total participants run the race uninterrupted, but she did not know how many runners were affected this year.

Runners who must stop have to wait in a corral ahead of the intersection. A timing mat records when runners enter the corral, and a second mat registers when they exit. After the race, organizers subtract the time spent in the corral from runners' overall finish times.

“We’ve done the best that we can with what we’ve got,” Krepiakevich said. “Safety is a top priority.”

The practice of occasionally stopping runners at intersections in the race has been in place since 2012 when organizers debuted a redesigned course based on runners’ feedback, said Krepiakevich. The race first took place in 1972.



“It was designed to showcase the beauty of the city,” Krepiakevich said. “This was not done light-heartedly. It was done after a lot of consultation with runners and through surveys with the stakeholders and sponsors and everyone else. It took two years to negotiate the course with the city and figure out all the different components and to develop the traffic management plan.”

The Vancouver Police Department echoed similar sentiments about runners' safety but would not say who specifically told officers to operate the intersections as they did on Sunday.

“Diverting traffic to an uncontrolled intersection is potentially problematic and dangerous,” Brian Montague, the VPD's media relations officer, said via email. “Faced with the conditions at that intersection, regardless of the reason why there was a significant amount of traffic, the Traffic Authority kept the safety of those runners as a priority.”

The race website does notify runners about the “controlled crossings,” but it does not include a description of a process that resembles what Brain recorded in the video.

Kangsoon Park, a Vancouver resident for 11 years, ran the marathon this year and in 2014. On Sunday, officials stopped him twice.

“The first one lasted about 23 seconds, and the second one was about 12 seconds, though it felt like an eon to me,” Park said. “When I was stopped first I thought that it might be an emergency. But when I was stopped the second time, I thought it was ridiculous. I got an impression that the organizer might think the race was just one of the community events.”

Park tried not to let it ruin his race and believes it didn’t significantly affect his performance.

“However, it left me with a bad aftertaste,” Park said. Organizers adjusted his overall time of 3:24:25 by 18 seconds on Monday. He also received a response from the race that read: “We are sorry for any inconveniences with yesterday’s race, but we do have to work with local transit at specific times during the race. This is why we build a corral system where your time is adjusted if you had to wait.”

Though the race claims the controlled intersections have worked fine in previous years, the fact that runners get stopped midrace has become a topic of discussion among locals.

David Papineau led the 3:05 pace group and has run the race every year since the course changed. He also serves as a community ambassador for the marathon.

“I don’t think I was aware of it the first year they did it,” Papineau said. “But I actually had a friend who volunteered for the race last year. They assigned her to [one of the intersections] and someone handed her a stop sign, telling her that her job was to stop the runners. She was like, ‘What?’”

His pace group managed to finish the race without having to pause their watches.

“I did feel that apprehension as I approached both streets, and I glanced over to see how much traffic was there,” Papineau said. “As we crossed Granville Street, I turned to everybody in my pace group and said, ‘Hey, congratulations! We made it through without having to stop.’”

Papineau said he understands that the safety of runners and the cost of closing down roads both play a big role for why organizers choose to stop runners.



“I don't think that’s fair to runners, especially those from outside the country,” Papineau said. "There was a couple I was talking to at an expo who said, ‘Oh Vancouver! Isn’t that the race where they make you stop?’ I thought, 'That’s the last thing you want getting out as a reputation.'”

Krepiakevich said the race is working to ensure officials and volunteers implement traffic control plans properly in the future.

“From my perspective, it’s disheartening to see that [video] after months of planning and negotiating and rehearsing with so many different stakeholders,” Krepiakevich said. “We’re going to look at this and figure out a way of mitigating it in the future.”

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