Use common sense in setting speed limits
While there is certainly merit in assessing legitimate requirements for speed alterations under some circumstances, I do not believe that the across-the-board large reductions for main rural roads in Saanich are at all sensible.
Our climate and aging demographic makes it even more likely that people will be using cars at an ever-increasing rate, especially from rural areas like Saanich.
To adopt or apply inner-city logic to rural areas will only serve to frustrate those populations and make people break the law when they use their car. It will polarize and pit car drivers against bicyclists more than ever.
We have already spent tens of millions on bicycle lanes, and now we plan to ridiculously restrict car drivers to torturously slow speeds in order to prove how enlightened and environmentally sensitive we are.
Encouraging bicycle use is wonderful for those able to realistically ride them daily 20 miles in both directions, but that is not reality for the majority.
There is a line where reasonable crosses to ridiculous.
I believe that lowering any rural speed limits to below the current speeds would clearly be crossing that line. Give bicyclists alternate routes and allow for the free flow of existing traffic.
Encouraging the mixing of two-tonne vehicles with frustrated drivers with bikes and pedestrians is dangerously bad planning. The Highlands is a prime example. The entire route is 30 km/h, yet not a single driver adheres to it.
Is Saanich planning to set people up for failure? That is not leadership, it is abdication of good government and over-reach for political gain.
Please rethink this.
John Reilly
Victoria
Childhood rules should be taught again
We’ve lost sight of the reasons we have roads. Rather than treat our roads for what they are made for — the expeditious movement of people and goods from place to place — councils have decided to “dumb down” roads to a lower level, treating streets as oversize walkways rather than do what is right: Educate people from an early age to respect our roadways for what they are.
It’s correct (and basic physics) that any sort of collision between a vehicle — even a tiny one — and human, the human is the big loser.
When I was young, we had this truism ingrained into our pre-pubescent brains by parents, teachers and friendly constables who came to our schools every year to talk about safety.
Now it seems those lessons have been set aside, physics notwithstanding. Instead, we are now encouraged to think of streets as enlarged sidewalks with vehicle traffic taking secondary status through lower limits, the sole rationale for which seems to be to allow rule- ignoring pedestrians to freely flout the rules we have been taught since childhood.
The rules are still there.
We must return to educating our young people when it comes to road safety and leave the perfectly legitimate and reasonable limits alone.
K.M. Frye
Saanich
Missing middle will mean views are lost
The civic election is only a mere three months from now, and Victoria city council may ultimately decide the future appearance of neighbourhoods with the “Missing Middle Housing Initiative” proposal.
Though I admire council for looking into the future, I feel that this is a blanket proposal, and does not bring heritage into the conversation.
Imagine a four-storey condo built beside Emily Carr House in James Bay.
This could be a reality if our present council decides to push this extremely controversial proposal to reality.
As Victoria is a prominent tourism destination, the effect is already apparent with the unconscionable decision to build a corporate office building behind the iconic Fairmont Empress Hotel.
A few hotels and condos will no longer have the view they’ve enjoyed in the past.
Mur Meadows
Victoria
Maybe the Americans have the best solution
With all of the problems in our health-care system and the apparent lack of viable solutions to fix it, I’m starting to think this might be our government’s way of making us feel like the U.S. model of health care would be a better idea.
I’m lucky to be healthy and have a doctor, but if I ever did get a life-threatening disease, I know I certainly wouldn’t mind paying for decent treatment if that would fix things.
Allison Stofer
Esquimalt
Run several trains every day on the Island
I agree we should have the train running again, but not like the way it did before.
The once-a-day service didn’t really help people up-Island. For example, someone coming for a medical appointment had to come down the night before and wait until the morning after the appointment to catch the train back home.
If there is only going to be one track, there could be a shuttle service where one train from the south meets the train from the north halfway between. Then there could be several trains a day.
Linda Taffs
Qualicum Beach
Railway proposal is missing key pieces
A recent letter mentioned the Metro Vancouver region with 2.7 million inhabitants and its rail follies. It mentions a “groundbreaking” Leewood study conducted for the Southern Railway corridor in the Fraser Valley.
This study, conducted in 2010, focused on what needed to be done to bring that corridor up to a standard to support both freight and passenger service. It mentioned nothing about ridership, financing and where revenue will come from for operating and maintaining the line.
It made an attempt to describe how the service would operate at peak and off-peak times, but it didn’t make sense since it looks at a corridor that goes from Chilliwack to downtown Vancouver on a line that would also have freight on it and it doesn’t mention the five existing passenger rail lines that run and connect into other lines to downtown Vancouver.
Nor does it attempt to address the issue that 70 per cent of the traffic south of the Fraser River doesn’t cross a bridge or tunnel to get to work or to shop.
With current plans to extend Skytrain to Langley, the only part of the Leewood study that mighty make sense today is using the Southern Railway corridor in the Fraser Valley from Chilliwack to Langley City.
And the reason that won’t happen in the near or immediate future is the lack of sufficient passengers who would use that corridor for transportation. Like the current E&N proposal, it lacks a good dose of reality.
The writer should spend time on the Island to see the E&N corridor from Langford to Vic West, which exists along with a walking/bicycle trail which has a significant number of people walking and cycling that trail for both commuting and for recreation.
Both the Leewood Study of 2010 that the letter-writer refers to and the current Island Corridor Foundation’s flawed 2022 rendition of passenger service on the E&N corridor are like buying a puzzle at a garage sale with a lovely picture of what’s inside and then opening up the box to find 60 per cent of the puzzle pieces missing.
Phil Le Good
Cobble Hill
Cruise ship scrubbers add to the problem
Re: “Cruise-ship industry an environmental mess,” letter, July 5.
The writer correctly identifies the environmental costs associated with the cruise industry in Victoria. The use of scrubbers is a prime example.
Scrubbers remove harmful sulphur oxides from the exhaust gases of fuels used by cruise ships. But they turn these gases into toxic washwater, which is then dumped into coastal waters.
Environmental groups like World Wildlife Fund-CA have documented how the pollution caused by discharged (scrubber) washwater harms marine wildlife and coastal ecosystems, as well as limiting the ocean’s ability to trap greenhouse gases. (Cruise ships also discharge sewage and greywater.)
The harmful impact of scrubbers is why port authorities in Quebec, Seattle, Vancouver and others around the world have moved to ban them. In Seattle and Vancouver, the cruise industry is fighting these bans. Outlawing scrubbers means cruise ships would have to burn safer, but more expensive, low-sulphur fuels.
While the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority doesn’t have the authority to ban scrubbers, they can ask Transport Canada, which does, for their support in following the Port of Vancouver’s scrubber ban.
If not, Victoria will remain the environmental laggard of the Salish Sea.
Ira Shorr
Victoria
The glorious Earth does not need your trash
I am happy that summer is looming, but along with that comes the usual trash on precious beaches and in the parks. As someone who picks up a lot of this trash, it always leaves me shocked and dismayed how many people just treat the Earth like a garbage can.
So this is a reminder to everyone to please pick up after yourselves, your children and pets. If we love something we must protect it — the Earth gifts us with its spectacular beauty and ongoing gifts of sustenance — the least we can do is appreciate, respect and protect it all before it’s too damaged to repair.
Anne Forbes
Victoria
Those deep-space photos are a distraction
What better way to distract people from the woes of our mismanaged Earth than to give us pretty deep-space pictures from a multibillion-dollar camera. Just another colossal waste of money.
Steve Hoffman
Victoria
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