The Galloping Goose trail will be moved closer to the the Marigold and Spectrum schools as part of the McKenzie interchange project, and parents are expressing concerns about safety, traffic noise and the loss of green space.
The Goose is being moved to make room for merge lanes for traffic coming from McKenzie Avenue and heading westbound on the Trans-Canada Highway, said David Loveridge, facilities manager for the Greater Victoria School District.
The district is selling 1.34 rocky, treed acres to the province for $1.1 million.
“Most of the tree border that is there now will be cleared out because they’re moving the Goose closer to the schools,” Loveridge said. “Almost the entire tree boundary on the south end of the schools will be gone.”
Loveridge said he did not think the Garry oaks on the property would be affected, but Marigold parent Sheryl Roodenburg said she fears that “hundreds of years of growth of the Garry oak meadows” is about to be lost.
“It’s not going to look nice at all,” said Roodenburg, who is president of the Marigold Parent Advisory Committee.
The project means the “terrible” loss of green space that provides shade, education and a place for creative play. “It is also the main barrier to keep the over 300 kids at Marigold School safe during school hours,” she said.
The kids stop at the natural barrier, but she fears the planned chain-link fence will be seen as a challenge to try climbing. “The safety of the children needs to be more of a priority,” she said.
Roodenburg said the Transportation Ministry has promised to provide $150,000 for fencing, landscaping, and replanting on school property, but that is “nowhere near enough” to replace what it is removing.
In a statement to the Times Colonist on Wednesday, the ministry said that it is committed to minimizing the environmental impact of the highway improvement. “Staff are working with local biologists with expert knowledge of Garry oak arbutus ecosystem to determine the potential impacts to the ecological values at this site,” the statement said.
Once this has been determined, these experts will help the ministry to prepare a mitigation plan to offset the impacts according to provincial policy.
Marigold parent Katherine Brandt says the highway lanes will be 40 metres from Marigold school, 10 metres closer than they are today, and that the edge of the on ramp will be just 30 metres from the school.
“That is a lot closer,” she said in a letter to school trustees.
The province says that the locations of highway lanes and ramps are still approximate as the project team continues to work on the detailed design of the interchange.
“However, it is the intent of the ministry to minimize the impact by placing the highway as far from the school as design allows, and providing separation from the highway.
“In addition to a natural buffer zone, Marigold school will be separated from the highway by the Galloping Goose trail approximately 20 metres away, and a sound wall adjacent to the highway to reduce noise levels and to protect cyclists and pedestrians near the schools from the vehicle traffic on the highway.”
Loveridge said the sound abatement wall is expected to be about three metres high, and made of concrete with the appearance of stone and brick.
Roodenburg said she is concerned that the wall will not deal with the din from two years of construction noise.
She said she is also concerned that the new, wider Goose will put kids “at higher risk” because it will accommodate high-volume lanes of various users, including bus interchange passengers and cyclists who rarely use the small bridge over the Trans-Canada.
School children will have to walk considerably further to use the new bridge, Brandt added. They now walk 150 metres from a drop-off at Esson Road by Portage Road.
“To reach the same point using the new pedestrian bridge will be 450 metres. This is no longer going to be a safe, direct route to school for young children. … The proposed location will take children far out of the way and they will then have to walk on their own along the Goose, for a fair distance,” she said.
The province said improvements to the Goose mean students will no longer need to walk along the shoulder of the highway or cross the highway at the traffic signal.
