Editor:
In the June 22 article, “Eagleview Heights wins final approval,” you quoted Silas White as saying, “I do think the traffic is something we need to watch. I think the traffic impact study is something we need to give a lot of credence to… It’s something council will have to continue to watch as development in this area evolves and if we do have to make other traffic changes, future councils should.”
My question is, why “watch” this now and in the future? When the development was first proposed, common sense told me my neighbourhood, as a walking neighbourhood, was doomed. I sat on the corner of Eaglecrest and Oceanmount counting traffic and walkers. I shared the results with council. I have never had a response from anyone. I have subsequently reiterated how important it is for us (and others) to walk through our community for health and for social reasons.
With the promise of a 150 per cent increase in traffic down our street that was never meant as a throughway, we will be trapped on our lots or confined to sidewalks. Sidewalks sound fine until you figure out whether you will take them from the roadway or from the boulevards we have landscaped at our own expense. Sidewalks sound fine until you take your mother on her scooter down Shaw Road and meet another daughter pushing her mother in a wheelchair, and you have to negotiate which of you will leave the sidewalk because it’s not wide enough for both. Sidewalks sound fine if you don’t know that in snowy weather the plow often clears our street two or three times in a day, and if they push that snow onto a sidewalk in front of my house, I’ll have to shovel it two or three times. And no sidewalks can bring back street hockey.
The time for watching the traffic issue has long past. There is no remedy that will make us whole. Only lower density would have done that.
Audrey Owen, Gibsons
