Re: New bike path is a positive for Saanich commuters, (Letters, May 23)
The letter-writer’s letter supporting the path effectively lists the reasons why the neighbourhood was against the path going through the park. It has increased noise in the park and made it physically less secure. It also carved up some of the functional green fields.
This trail will deposit users directly in the path of cars leaving the highway and trying to merge immediately with McKenzie Avenue. Drivers are usually looking hard over their left shoulder for traffic, not ahead of them.
In the past few years, I’ve nearly been struck twice, have witnessed several rear-end collisions and one near broad-side. Bits of broken glass on the road often indicate a fender bender in the previous day or two. Imagine a car plowing into someone on a motorized scooter or a child on a bike instead of the end of another car.
Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture.
There is already a cycling route through the neighbourhood that has been in use for 15 years. For the sake of saving cyclists a minute of time, are people willing to play Russian Roulette with people’s lives while paying a couple of hundred thousand dollars in taxes to pave over green space and duplicate something that was already in place?
Mike Laplante
Saanich
