The City of Calgary will be looking at potential short- and long-term improvements to an LRT at-grade road crossing where a man was killed Wednesday morning.

Calgary police continue their investigation after a 48-year-old man driving a 2000 Chrysler Intrepid entered the path of an eastbound CTrain around 8:25 a.m. Wednesday on the Memorial Drive and Deerfoot Trail overpass.

According to police, the CTrain hit the front passenger side of the car and pushed it along the tracks and the driver side hit a support beam. The driver was removed from the vehicle and transported to hospital where he later died. It hasn’t been mentioned at this point if all crossing safety systems were functioning normally at the time of the incident.  

The Calgary Police Service Traffic Unit is continuing its investigation and is asking anyone with dashcam footage to come forward.

It’s the second fatality at that location over the past three months. In early December, a 79-year-old man was killed and a woman in her 70s was injured after their vehicle was hit by a CTrain.

The City of Calgary told LWC via an email response that monthly inspections are done on all crossings systemwide to ensure the functionality of warning devices. They said approach time readings are conducted every two months to help verify that the system operates according to design specifications.

“Following the December collision, the Transit and Mobility teams reviewed post-accident reports, video footage, and findings from the Calgary Police Service (CPS) to identify the root cause of the incident,” they wrote in their response.

“Ongoing coordination efforts are in place to explore additional options to enhance the safety of the crossing.”

According to data available through the City of Calgary open data portal, there were 123 recorded traffic incidents along Deerfoot Trail that involved either partial or total closures of lanes and ramps. Incidents on Memorial Drive and Deerfoot Trail were the highest by-interchange category, with 26, followed by 11 at 16 Avenue NE and 10 at both 32 Avenue NE and McKnight Trail.

The data, including that of Wednesday’s incident, does not indicate specifically the type of vehicles involved in an incident.

Monitoring the system for safety performance: City

The City said that they maintain a variety of crossing safety infrastructure throughout the system to ensure a safer environment for all road users.

According to a 2019 LRT at-grade crossing report presented at Calgary city council, there were 92 at-grade crossings maintained by the City of Calgary. There is a mix of pedestrian-only crossings and road crossings on that list, along with crossings that have both.  A 192-page LRT crossing safety review was done in conjunction with that report, but that document shows no reference to the Memorial Drive and Deerfoot Trail LRT crossing.

Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, whose ward covers this crossing, said it was important to wait until the Calgary police investigation was complete before jumping to any conclusions.  Still, he said the intersection has a lot of traffic incidents, largely a function of volume, he said.

“Every time we step into our cars, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when we have an incident and with so many cars involved in that intersection,” he said.

According to 2022 City of Calgary traffic flow maps, 35,000 cars travel that east-west corridor daily. That’s the third lowest among interchanges on Deerfoot Trail. However, the corridor between 17 Avenue SE and 16 Avenue NE has the highest daily traffic volume north-south on Deerfoot Trail (between 130,000 and 145,000 vehicles daily).

Coun. Carra did reference a Deerfoot Trail / Memorial Drive / 17 Avenue SE plan put forth by the province as a part of the corridor’s upgrades. He said that could solve much of the issue with the at-grade crossing, but would cost of hundreds of millions.

In that Deerfoot Trail corridor study, Memorial Drive is mentioned several times, both in connection with Barlow Trail upgrades and the direct Deerfoot / Memorial Drive interchange. It does reference the removal of at-grade crossings but doesn’t specifically connect that to the LRT.

In the meantime, Carra said he’ll wait for the CPS report on this latest incident.

“If there are tangible environmental design changes that come out of that investigation, those will be done,” he said.

“But what I’m also saying is that everyone identifies that intersection – almost at every intersection – as having some problems and there’s lots of money that could be spent to make those problems go away, but they just create other problems.”