Editor:
The following letter was addressed to Mike Farnworth, Minister of Transportation and Transit, and shared with Coast Reporter.
Re. Highway 101 Alternate Route study – Ridiculous on so many levels. After more than 3 years of waiting, the above “final” report contains only one minor recommendation. Whilst we applaud the Ministry officials who produced this study for recognizing the need to take traffic away from upper Gibsons, we question the Ministry’s commitment to actually addressing the structural realities on the Southern Sunshine Coast.
The claim that the current route, travelling through neighbourhoods and downtown streets, will be able to handle the traffic to at least 2050 is simply absurd, as anyone who drives the route regularly can tell you.
Also, why is the Report silent on the accidents and deaths on this rural roadway – did the authors of the report know our record is worse than the provincial average? And why does the report not utilize current traffic numbers up to and including this summer while using very conservative growth numbers?
The idea that unspecified “improvements” to the existing Highway 101 will fix anything is out of touch with reality. One has only to look at the key challenge from the Chapman Creek bridge, along the parkway beside Davis Bay beach, to the most dangerous narrow section in Selma Park and onwards to the streets in downtown Sechelt to realize “improvements” elsewhere on the route are band-aids that will not address the core needs for residential, commercial and tourist users. And how much will these undisclosed “improvements” cost?
Surely, it would have been better to put the money spent on these desktop studies towards a real solution. Nothing has changed - The Sunshine Coast Needs a Highway!
Robin Merriott
for Sunshine Coast Highway Society
