The City of Nanaimo is winning awards for its transportation engineering design standards and raised-local intersections. The Metral Drive Project showcases seven raised local intersections that improve safety and multi-modal transportation options.

The complete street engineering standards, adoption of the raised-local intersection, and the Metral Drive project have now been recognized with three significant awards:

• Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) Community Excellence Award for Excellence in Sustainability.
• Institute of Transportation Engineer’s (ITE) 2021 North American Complete Street Technical Achievement Award.
• Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) 2020 Sustainable Transportation Award.

“Road design standards have been largely unchanged for decades, and now is the time to shift towards a friendlier and more sustainable transportation system. We aren’t asking anyone to ditch their car, but we are presenting more options for your commute, safer roads and a better connected community. Indeed, Metral is now a concrete example of the future of Nanaimo’s roads,” said Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog.

The new Complete Streets Engineering Standards, adopted by Nanaimo city council in 2020, prioritize safety and accessibility for all commuters by embracing traffic-calming and multi-modal transportation.

The city’s new standards include continuous sidewalks and bicycle lanes that remain raised as they cross over local road intersections. This Dutch-inspired approach is a shift in thinking, moving from creating crosswalks and bike paths that cross roads, to creating roads that cross over pedestrian and bicycle spaces.

The emphasis to slow down and safely make a turn shifts to the motorist, which reduces the likelihood and severity of a collision with a pedestrian, cyclist or any other motor vehicle. As per the Province’s BC Community Road Safety Toolkit, “raised crossings can reduce vehicle-pedestrian crashes resulting in injury by as much as 46% and reduce vehicle-bicycle crashes resulting in injury by as much as 51%.”

The raised and continuous sidewalks are also safer for mobility-impaired pedestrians and visually-impaired pedestrians, creating a continuous walk without the need to navigate curb ramps.

Nanaimo (and its Metral Drive Project) is one of only a few North American cities to implement true Dutch-style raised intersections, and the first to adopt it into municipal engineering standards.