Enforce traffic rules, leave the road alone
Instead of widening the Malahat through Goldstream Park, I would suggest that the speed limits be enforced, lighting be improved and the transport police frequently check vehicles for proper snow tires.
Too many people flout the regulations that are meant to make driving safer. I prefer enforcement to more environmental degradation.
Richard Dean
Sidney
Rather than a wider road, let’s try a train
Widening the roadway for the Goldstream corridor?
Oh, if we only had a train! And a brain!
Sabine Orlik
Victoria
Spend that money on trains, not highways
That proposed highway widening through Goldstream Park should not happen.
Reinstate a multi-train rail system, adding in that $162 million to make it viable.
Passenger trains every 20 minutes would get hundreds of people to work taking huge numbers of vehicles off the Trans-Canada Highway.
Cargo transport trains from Nanaimo and Port Alberni interphased with passenger trains would remove hundreds of huge transport trucks from the highways. It would thereby remove most chances of those trucks crashing, jack-knifing and spilling all those vehicles’ worth of fuels into the Goldstream River and other rivers and streams killing especially valuable spawning salmon.
We really need to think sensibly. Parking has been sadly so reduced in downtown Victoria that workers trying to find parking daily have a difficult time.
Reducing vehicles and transport trucks from the highway, not expanding the highway to make more room for hundreds more cars and trucks, would be far more sensible.
It would also go a long way toward protecting our precious, beautiful environment here on our lovely island. Please reinstate the trains, not expand the highways.
Tricia Mancuso
Langford
Garden waste fee will cause more burning
The decision by Saanich council to start charging for garden waste on its face makes some sense, however there is a missed opportunity.
It will once again be cheaper to burn waste rather than bring it to the yard. The bylaws regarding burn permits are not in any way enforced and to do so would be a prohibitive cost.
The permit fee will be lower than the tipping fee. It is long past time to ban burning throughout Saanich and improve the air quality for all residents.
It is the right thing to do.
Jim Dooner
Saanich
How can people be so cruel? Here’s a clue
Re: “In the spirit of reconciliation, let’s come together to discuss this play,” commentary, March 13.
Cancel culture has no place in a healthy democracy. I applaud Heather Menzies’ invitation to those who orchestrated the cancellation of Wendy Lill’s play, Sisters, at Theatre Inconnu in Victoria last week to come together with the producer and director, and perhaps agree to a special additional performance either preceded by or followed by a dialogue in which all can participate.
What a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate an act of reconciliation and to take advantage of a teachable moment.
To act as police, judge, jury and executioner with no actual knowledge of the play and its content, but based solely on the issue that the play’s author is a white person and the play’s main character is a white person, is a clear example of mob mentality and a sad statement on the current state of our freedom of expression.
Shame on the building owner that houses Theatre Inconnu for caving into the mob and forcing the cancellation of the play.
I’m sure there are many of us who have wondered how ordinary people could act so cruelly towards others, especially children.
This play may shed some light on it.
Lorna Hillman
Victoria
Throwing rocks is not the best way
Re: “In the spirit of reconciliation, let’s come together to discuss this play,” commentary, March 13.
Heather Menzies’ commentary on the cancellation of the closing night of Sisters is welcome.
We had tickets for the final night and were deeply disappointed to learn that the show would not go on. It is hard not to see this sequence of events as yet another ill-founded decision based on social media magnified misunderstandings, fear and bullying.
The result has been much harm, to the production team, to Theatre Inconnu, to Fernwood. However, what is most important and what has sparked us to write is Menzies’ suggestion of a circle including those associated with the complaint and those harmed (perhaps after a special performance of the production), that can reach for reconciliation between interests.
We have to move past throwing rocks if we are to find a more peaceful community in the world. This would explore one way of doing so.
Tony Hodge and Ingrid Taggart
Victoria
Coles Bay a perfect spot for an inlet bridge
Why isn’t Coles Bay being considered as a landing point for a Saanich Inlet bridge? A 3.5-kilometre floating bridge (similar to Kelowna’s) from Coles Bay to the current Mill Bay ferry terminal (or just north of it) could be the solution to our traffic woes.
This makes the most sense geographically and would be the best option to smoothly integrate existing infrastructure improvements to funnel traffic on either side.
Coles Bay leads directly to McTavish Road where the airport interchange improvements have already been made, and the land around Bamberton is still relatively vacant leading to the Trans-Canada Highway.
No amount of Malahat spending will solve shutdowns and the increasing traffic snarls that coincide with increased development.
One windstorm, one earthquake, one snowstorm, one rock fall, one rainstorm, one bad accident, and the Malahat is out of operation. We need an alternative throughway, rail is neat but it isn’t enough to put a dent in the 25,000 average daily vehicles, let alone in an emergency.
Creating a bridge loop would divide Malahat traffic in half and address the core of our traffic issues.
Dorian Redden
Cobble Hill
Police-liaison argument has no basis in fact
Kasari Govender, B.C.’s human rights commissioner, has said: “We know that other jurisdictions have shown police liaison officers have been really harmful to Black and Indigenous children for example and their families, and children with disabilities. We know that in B.C., certain policing practices have been shown to have really disproportionate impacts on the same communities,”
There are two propositions here, and I have seen no justification for either.
In the first case, if, as I suspect, the “other jurisdictions” are in the United States, we should pay little heed. We should not let the United States’, perhaps justifiable, preoccupation with gun violence and its after-effects in their schools, influence local decisions in Victoria. We are not them.
Regarding police liaising in B.C., the anecdotal evidence recently printed in the Times Colonist, runs contrary to the second proposition in her statement.
Bob Miers
Saanich
Stop useless projects, save that money
As I anxiously wait to see how Victoria council’s budget deliberations manifest themselves on my tax bill, I can’t escape the vision I have of Mayor Marianne Alto desperately flipping seat cushions in her search for loose change to help her reduce the increases coming in this year’s assessment.
Well, I’m here to help. Stop doing dumb projects!
I’m sure most taxpayers will have some suggestions, but here’s mine. I’ve lived in the Quadra Hillside area for the past 30 years and have navigated the intersection at Quadra and Topaz literally thousands of times without incident. It worked fine!
But then somebody got the idea that it was in need of an “upgrade.” City works crews are systematically demolishing each corner and reconfiguring them, making each bigger and fancier.
Lovely work but isn’t really going to improve the function. If anything, constricting the entries onto Topaz from Quadra is more likely to make it worse.
I have no idea how much money has been spent on this project to date but please, stop now. It would be like money in the bank.
Jim Jaarsma
Victoria
If not human powered, stay off trails
As a longtime cyclist and daily bike rider, I find the recent decision by the City of Victoria to allow all electric modes of transportation in bike lanes concerning.
Many of these electric devices (one-wheels, skateboards, scooters, bikes) exceed the regulated 32 km/h limits in Canada. The fact that the city is advertising a 50 km/h speed limit is dangerous.
Bike lanes can be crowded with older folks, young children, and cyclists of varying abilities; 50 km/h is way too fast. Many of these alternative e-devices can also be modified to exceed the 32 km/h limits and require no physical effort from the rider.
The same rules that dictate the speed limits in Canada also state that “an e-bike is identified as a motor assisted cycle in British Columbia which differs from electric mopeds and scooters, which are limited speed motorcycles.”
I’m all for getting people out of their cars and using alternate modes of transportation, but allowing these incredibly fast devices on our narrow bike lanes is a total fail.
If you don’t have to pedal or push the device, or use any human power at all, it’s a motor vehicle and should be on the road with other motor vehicles.
Jason Gammon
Victoria
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