Gondek calls for modernized approach to street safety with pedestrian fatalities hitting historic high
Posted May 26, 2025 5:33 pm.
Last Updated May 27, 2025 7:04 am.
With pedestrian fatalities reaching a historic high, Calgary’s mayor is calling on council to act quickly and help modernize the city’s approach to street safety and in an effort to prevent further loss of life.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek held an availability on Monday afternoon where she spoke about traffic safety ahead of the issue being discussed at city council on Tuesday.
Gondek says 29 people were killed in traffic collisions in Calgary in 2024, including 13 pedestrians — the highest number of fatalities recorded in over a decade.
“And these are not numbers, these are families that are left shattered, lives that are stolen, and communities left to grieve and wonder why nothing could have been changed sooner,” she says.
The mayor spoke Monday from the intersection where 17-year-old Amy Tran was killed earlier this year. Tran was walking at a marked crosswalk at Rundlehorn Drive NE and 26 Avenue on Jan. 15 when she was struck and pinned under an SUV.
“Her death is heartbreaking,” says Gondek. “But what’s worse is what we heard from the people of Pineridge — ‘we saw this coming.'”
As a result, she plans to introduce an amendment to strengthen a motion before council by directing administration to move away from what she called the city’s reactive warrant system.
“Cities like Edmonton have already moved away from this reactive model, opting for a safe systems approach that focuses on risk prevention, not tragedy response,” says the mayor.
The original motion calls for a one-time $1 million investment in 2025.
Gondek says its imperative the city builds safer pedestrian spaces by using artificial intelligence to help detect risky driving and near-miss events. She also wants Calgary to move towards better use of collision data, 311 call data, and open data sources.
“By analyzing collision patterns, alongside speed, road design, and time of day, we can pinpoint high-risk areas and make targeted interventions before someone is hurt,” she says.
Gondek recently criticized the province’s decision to restrict photo radar use on city streets. Saying the move has led to more deaths and serious injury crashes.
Earlier this month, she cited a deadly rollover, a hit-and-run of a 16-year-old and a crash that injured an on-duty paramedic as reasons to bring back photo units.
Former police chief Mark Neufeld argued photo radar was a way to improve road safety, but Alberta’s transportation minister Devin Dreeshen called it a cash cow.
The province’s new rules ban photo radar on numbered provincial highways and connectors, restricting it only to school, playground, and construction zones. Intersection safety devices in Alberta are also being limited to red light enforcement only, ending what is commonly known as “speed on green” tickets.
