To the editor:
About two weeks ago, when the first curbing was installed at Ogden and Boucherie on the much-touted Boucherie Road Wine Trail upgrade, it appeared to me that the width of the newly paved Boucherie Road was unusually narrow. I own a 40-foot fifth wheel trailer, and have many years of experience towing it around North America, so it is second nature to me to register road width conditions when they may be an issue for a large vehicle.
In order to check my suspicions, I actually measured the width of the newly paved section of Boucherie, curb to curb, about 50 meters in from the intersection with Boucherie. I was shocked, although not surprised, to find that it is barely 21 feet 7 inches (6.6m) wide, meaning that the travel lanes on this busy, important highway, are going to be only 10 feet 8 inches wide. It is unbelievable that our West Kelowna Council, the engineering department, and everyone else involved, could have approved this situation. My fifth wheel trailer, like other wide body RVs, is 9 feet wide, and with mirrors extended on my truck, there would only be a few inches between two trailers like mine passing one another in opposite directions. This puts the new, “improved” Boucherie in the same class as the Mexican Baja highway, which many people are afraid to drive because of the narrow lanes. It seems that they will no longer have to leave home to experience the same “third world” road conditions.
The basic narrowness problem is further complicated by the fact that curbs are installed. This means that there is nowhere to go if someone coming the opposite way is over the centre line, other than trying to mount the curb. Drivers will more or less be trapped in a dangerous situation. In addition, emergency vehicles will be unable to pass stalled traffic using the highway. At the very least, the new improved Boucherie should have been wide enough to allow emergency vehicles to squeeze by if drivers pulled over.
It is a disgrace that taxpayers’ money is being squandered, more than $8.5 million, on a new road that is more dangerous and more narrow than the one it replaced. Even the residential, no exit, street I live on in West Kelowna is 32 feet 6 inches inches (9.9m) wide, which is what Boucherie should have been. Council members have demonstrated complete incompetence by failing to plan for today’s traffic situation, let alone future growth, and they should all resign.
Edward White
West Kelowna
