Re: “For now, the Crawl lives on,” column, Feb. 16.
Jack Knox’s column strikes a chord, but fails to address some obvious solutions for the Colwood Crawl.
The McKenzie interchange will help, but won’t change the fact that there are still only two practical road routes from the West Shore into Victoria.
Let’s address the elephants in the room. First, the Old Island Highway from Sooke Road to Craigflower Road needs to be four-laned, preferably all the way to Tillicum Road. Designate the right-hand lane for high-occupancy vehicles and buses during rush hours.
Second, the Admirals Road bridge across the Gorge needs to be four lanes, preferably to the Trans-Canada Highway, but at least to Gorge Road. It is a major bottleneck for traffic accessing the Old Island Highway.
Third, the intersection at Burnside Road and Watkiss Way needs to be converted to a traffic light, as a first step in allowing Burnside to pick up a reasonable amount of overflow commuter traffic.
People who live in View Royal and along Burnside will say: “Why does my neighbourhood have to be impacted by West Shore traffic?” My response is, you’re right. But traffic isn’t going away any time soon.
Legislation might be needed to ensure that communities such as Langford, where I live, are able to approve population-density increases only with a corresponding increase in funding for regional transportation projects.
There is no free ride. Everybody likes low property taxes, until they find themselves stuck in a three-hour commute every day. The time has come to pay the piper.
Chris Bradshaw
Langford
