Following the death of a woman walking across an intersection in Lachine, a city councillor says bureaucratic inertia prevents making streets safer.

On Monday morning the 80-year-old woman was walking east across the intersection of Notre Dame St. and St. Pierre Ave. on a green light, but did not make it all the way through before the light changed.

A truck driver waiting at the intersection went north on St. Pierre as soon as the light turned green, having failed to see there was a pedestrian directly in front of him.

City councillor Maja Vodanovic has long complained about the intersection which has seen a flood of new traffic since construction began on the Turcot Interchange.

She is calling on the borough mayor Claude Dauphin to personally intervene.

"There is no communication between the drivers, the police, KPH, the city. You know we have the central city, we have the borough, we have the citizens, the police and nobody is putting them all together at the same table and saying 'okay, who is responsible for all this,'" said Vodanovic.

Pedestrians currently have 28 seconds to cross St. Pierre – a challenge for those with lowered mobility.

“It's too much traffic and the light doesn't have enough time for the pedestrians to cross both streets there,” said Tony Zoitakas, owner of the nearby Le Cordon restaurant.

Vodanovic said she’s run into a stone wall trying to make improvements at other intersections . She said there are too many players involved in making decisions and the result is a lack of coordination and communication.

Dauphin agreed bureaucratic red tape is a problem, but said he would push for changes, particularly at the intersection in question.

“We will work in the next couple of days on what can be done to make these lights safer. We will have more seconds for our pedestrians, so we're working on it right now,” he said, adding that in the meantime, police presence has been increased at that intersection.

Many people in the neighbourhood suggested giving pedestrians more time to cross the street on foot. Others said the stop lines should be pushed back from the intersection so that drivers would have a better view of the crosswalks.

Several cyclists told CTV that they ride on the sidewalk in order to avoid the many heavy trucks using the intersection.

“I would consider it dangerous because there's just so many cars and it's a bit confusing at the light,” said cyclist Alexandra Jaruc.