Sechelt council has endorsed a Ministry of Transportation and Infra-structure (MOTI) plan to widen Highway 101 on the oceanside of the southeast end of Davis Bay, eliminating 15 to 20 parking stalls and some landscape and seating.
The Ministry had previously put forward a plan which would widen the highway on the residential side, and required the expropriation of property. Widening that stretch of highway is one of several safety-targeted highway upgrades MOTI plans to carry out in Davis Bay this fall, for a total cost of $2.5 million.
Sechelt council voted July 21 to endorse the oceanside highway widening plan, as well as the closure of Westly Road where it meets the highway, and add a traffic light to the Davis Bay Road intersection with the highway.
Discussions that evening centred around which design to use for widening the highway, or whether it should be widened at all.
Regarding the oceanside widening plan, Coun. Keith Thirkell raised questions about the risks of eliminating any buffer between seawall pedestrian traffic and the highway.
"Our kids could fall into traffic, literally," he said.
Mayor Darren Inskster reminded councillors that the alternative design involved expropriation.
"I can't support that," he said. "I don't think taking people's fences and their yards away is appropriate."
Coun. Alice Janisch echoed Thirkell's pedestrian-safety concerns, suggesting neither option was appropriate. "I think we should drop the whole thing," she said. "The highway will come right up to the sidewalk and I just think that's a very bad thing to do."
Coun. Fred Taylor said he would reluctantly vote for the oceanside widening plan as the best compromise, adding council needs to continue pressuring the Ministry for more substantive funding for a bypass.
"The bigger issue is not this, the bigger issue is the bypass," he said. "So we're going to be faced with piecemealing this [highway] for, I think, a number of years until the provincial government gets their act together."
Council passed the recommendation to endorse the oceanside widening plan, with Thirkell and Janisch opposed.
Council also passed a recommendation for a "soft" closure of Westly Road, using planter boxes, and allowing for the road to be re-opened in the event of a bypass being constructed.
According to a staff report, cost savings of more than $300,000 can be achieved by closing off Westly, rather than an initial MOTI plan to re-configure the intersection with the highway to eliminate left turns. Those savings can be applied to shoulder widening along the Selma Park stretch of the highway.
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