I found myself rolling my eyes while reading your opinion piece on Hovey Road.
There’s a difference between hay delivered four times a year with a semi-truck and having semi-trucks roll by four times a week, along with daily passage of five-ton box trucks and other large trucks. And those semi-trucks have a hard time just turning the corner at Hovey and Tomlinson. From time to time it is necessary to have large trucks service farms and residences — for home or property maintenance or for farming purposes. That type of road usage is common sense and is very different from the daily truck traffic created by an industrial operation.
Even Kevin Gray, owner of VI Pallet which is responsible for the increased truck traffic, is reported as saying that “Hovey Road is not suitable for large trucks in the long term…” in media reports.
The District of Central Saanich’s own Structural Analysis of Hovey and Tomlinson roads states “…the road was determined to be deficient as the loading exceeds the structural capacity by a factor of seven…”
Businesses requiring heavy truck traffic should be able to be accessed by truck routes which have been designed with safety and load-bearing in mind. They should not be accessed by a single-lane dead-end rural road.
Patricia Wall, Central Saanich
