I commute four to five days a week from the North Shore into the downtown core of our lovely and charming town for my job. The last two years I have noticed a dramatic increase in the amount of traffic, not only coming into town, but within the town limits itself.
The severe lack of parking compounded with the recent closure of the parkade plus the removal of the four-way lights on the Josephine/Baker Street intersection is leading to all sorts of traffic flow and parking issues. This has me hoping that the city planners are looking into this issue with everyone’s best interests at heart.
I left work the other day, and the traffic that was trying to get through the lights on Vernon Street was backed up right to the four-way stop at the bottom of Baker.
This was at 3 p.m. on a Thursday in mid-September. I watched a vehicle attempt to go through the Josephine/Baker intersection, only having to stop in the middle of it to wait for an endless parade of pedestrians more intent on getting somewhere than letting a vehicle go through.
I can only think that this may start to become the norm and so I am hoping that serious studies into the parking and traffic issues are on the table at the city council meetings. We need more efforts into making easy accessible parking available for the working folks so that the parking spaces are left open for shoppers and tourists.
Perhaps another parkade where the parking spaces are between Vernon and Lake Street (beside the Salvation Army)?
A speedier method of a through-way to get people from one end of town to the other? We need some long-term vision!
Kris Huiberts
Balfour
