More than 650 Coast residents plus 50 tourists have put their names to a petition decrying a plan to widen Highway 101 where it intersects with Davis Bay Road, eliminating five memorial benches, some landscaping and 15 parallel parking spaces that buffer the Davis Bay seawall from traffic.
"Nobody knows who's in favour of this thing," said Lockie Brock, describing the comments he's been hearing while manning the petition table on the seawall, since the petition kicked off Monday, Aug.9.
Brock is a member of the Davis Bay Old Boys' walking club - a group of approximately 15 men and a few women who walk the seawall virtually daily - which has spearheaded the petition.
"I mean when you get into an issue, isn't there somebody that's on the other side?" Brock asked.
The highway-widening plan by the Davis Bay Road intersection, part of a number of safety-targeted road improvements which the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MOTI) plans to carry out in Davis Bay this fall, caught community attention after the District of Sechelt endorsed the plan at its July 21 meeting. At that meeting, council considered two options that MOTI put forward to accommodate a new southbound left-hand turn bay and traffic light at the Davis Bay Road intersection: widening on the residential side by acquiring private property, likely through expropriation; or widening on the oceanside by eliminating parallel parking which currently occupies an MOTI right-of-way. Council endorsed the latter plan.
But according to Sechelt Mayor Darren Inkster, the situation is more complex than meets the eye.
Inkster said council's top intent, in its years of lobbying the province for money for Highway 101 improvements, has been to widen the highway in the Selma Park area, where cyclists daily teeter along the edge of a virtually non-existent road shoulder and vehicles and bicycles struggle to coexist safely. A list of 10 Highway 101 priorities which council submitted to MOTI in March 2009 documents this. Of the list's top-five priorities, all, save one, involve Selma Park highway widening; the remaining priority, number two, was the improvement of the Highway 101 and Bay Road intersection in Davis Bay -an improvement which is not part of the current MOTI plan.
The Ministry, meanwhile, carried out some studies and developed a different plan.
Project manager Jay Porter said the current Davis Bay road improvements -which include the Davis Bay Road intersection and highway widening, a "soft closure" of Westly Road with planters, and changing the Whitaker Road intersection to allow only right turns - result from Insurance Corporation of British Columbia collision statistics and a 2007 MOTI operational and safety study that identified a high accident rate between Mission Bridge and Selma Park Road, plus a 2010 scoping study that honed in on the Davis Bay, Westly and Whitaker intersections as "the best bang for our buck."
Inkster said he and four other councillors met with MOTI to discuss the way the project was shifting four months ago.
"I was concerned that they had moved away from our priorities," he said. "We begrudgingly accepted the direction they said they needed to go in based on safety because that's what they told us they were going to do, and any savings they were able to get in Davis Bay were going to go to the Selma Park area."
The current MOTI plan will allocate any remaining funds of the project's $2.5 million budget - half funded by the province and half funded through federal stimulus money - following the Davis Bay improvements to Selma Park improvements.
For now, Porter said, plans are still being drawn up for highway widening and intersection improvements between Bay Road and Selma Park Road.
At this point, he said, it's impossible to know how far the remaining money will stretch, and how much of the Selma Park area would thus be upgraded. Porter said he couldn't comment on whether the whole Davis Bay plan could be scrapped, with the total sum used in Selma Park.
"It's hard to say," he said. "I'm the project manager, so I don't make those high-level decisions."
Inkster said there's concern amongst councillors that rejecting both Davis Bay highway widening plans could mean losing the highway improvement money altogether.
"I'm sure that a number of council members are fearful that money that the community has asked for for a number of years may not come forward if, in fact, we don't do any work in Davis Bay," he said. "[MOTI] may say, 'We'll redo the Davis Bay plan or we're not going to put our $1.25 million forward from the province because it doesn't meet our needs,' and then the feds wouldn't match it."
Some top petitioners' concerns include a lack of public consultation and what they perceive to be hasty decision-making on the part of council, which passed the endorsement at its final meeting before its August break.
"We're right now saying no to the project: shut her down and give us some more time," said Old Boys club member Bill Matheson, commenting that a project designed to improve safety may do just the reverse by putting seawall walkers right beside passing highway traffic.
But Porter noted that with this project, time is in short supply. Federal funds will be revoked if not used by March 31, 2011 and construction speed is at the mercy of fall and winter weather. Porter added that even if there were time to shift the improvements elsewhere with new project designs, which is doubtful, there's no guarantee a new set of residents wouldn't object to a new plan.
Inkster said that while emails are flying to and from councillors, he couldn't comment on how council may have shifted its stance, save to say the topic will be discussed at council's Sept.1 meeting.
"Council's definitely affected and we've exchanged e-mails about it, but council can't make decisions in cyberspace," he said.
More information about the project, including project diagrams, are available at: www.th.gov.bc.ca/highwayprojects/Hwy101_sechelt/. A District of Sechelt press release discussing the project in further detail also appears on page A8 of today's printed edition.
