A Lesson in logic and traffic

In order to deal with the traffic congestion and the delays, which promote anger and frustration amongst Kelowna’s permanent residents, our municipal and provincial agents who are responsible for the long term planning of local traffic control need to take a long term approach to our snowballing problem.

The project announced back in March of this year proposed the 4.5 kilometre stretch of Highway 97 widened between Edwards Road and Highway 33 to 6 lanes over multiple years at a cost of approximately $50.2 million.

"This work will improve traffic flow at the northern entrance to the city, and make for more efficient and safer connections to UBCO, Quail Ridge, Rutland, Glenmore, Ellison, Lake Country and beyond, for motorists, cyclists and transit users," said Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick on March 29 when he announced that the Government of Canada had set aside $18 million for the project, through the Building Canada Fund.  

The Province of British Columbia would be providing the remaining $32.2 million. A great idea and certainly an improvement but shortsighted as there will be many other problems by the time the $50.2 million have been spent.

Kelowna needs to plan now for the future. We are not going to get smaller but with the great marketing of our city and area we must not be blinkered.

At the south end of the central Okanagan there is need of a bypass north of Summerland to connect to 97A thereby relieving traffic problems around Peachland.

At the end of 97A there should be a spanned bridge across the lake to the south end of Kelowna which should provide three arterial links to Kelowna itself and should continue as a bypass to link up with 97 to Vernon. This would alleviate problems in West Kelowna, problems in Kelowna which will only get worse as we expand and which would make the $50.2 million proposed now a loss. The major surgery required to improve our ever increasing traffic flow problem will not be fixed with a band aid.

Take a close look at Seattle traffic and understand they did not prepare twenty years ago for what today is a nightmare and what will cost billions to fix but instead look at the Kelowna Hospital expansion that was planned and prepared and carried out for a growing Central Okanagan population and take a lesson in preparedness.

Michael Henderson. Kelowna. 250-765-7546.