Some worthwhile suggestions were put forward by government and business leaders during their first consultation session with West Vancouver - Sea to Sky MLA Jordan Sturdy about a possible fixed link to the Sunshine Coast, Sturdy told Coast Reporter.
“The objective really was to orient the group to what is being proposed, make sure that they understand the request for proposals and ensure that we are looking at what we need to look at,” Sturdy said of the June 23 meeting.
“Specifically we were looking for: are there alignments or suggestions that we hadn’t identified and that we should look at, or no?”
Sturdy said two items of information were brought up by the group that warranted further investigation.
The first was the group’s suggestion that a new roadway be looked at from the Davis Bay/Wilson Creek area to hook up with a proposed connection from Powell River to Highway 99 near Squamish that would pass by the end of Salmon Inlet.
The roadway link from Powell River to Squamish has been pushed by the Third Crossing Society, and would utilize several logging roads already in place.
A second item brought up at the meeting that warranted further consideration, Sturdy said, was the possibility of changing land uses on the Sunshine Coast in the future.
“For example, Langdale,” Sturdy said.
“So if the Langdale/Horseshoe Bay ferry was to be replaced with a fixed link, what would happen with the Langdale lands and would that be considered as part of the monetary or land aspect to offset costs [of the fixed link]?”
Sturdy said the June 23 talk with government and business leaders on the Coast was “a worthwhile discussion” and that it’s just the start of consultation efforts with community leaders while the fixed link feasibility study is underway.
“We’ve only done the upper and lower Sunshine Coast, so we’ll be in the Sea to Sky [area] and West Vancouver as well, and we’ve got to connect up with some First Nations,” he noted.
Sturdy said public consultation on a fixed link to the Lower Mainland won’t take place until a draft of the feasibility study is ready to be released.
“The objective would be to have a draft report out in the fall and then that’s really the time for a public dialogue, because we’ll have some information about the costs of the alignments, about the feasibility of the alignments and orders of magnitude,” Sturdy said.
