To the editor:
There seems to be a lot of rhetoric flying around about the bridge, much of it less than fully thought through. The problem, as anyone who drives across it with any frequency must be aware, is not with the bridge itself, but what happens at either end, specifically, the eastern end.
An extra eastbound lane would make little if any difference to traffic congestion, because the choke point isn’t the bridge itself but the Abbott Street intersection. There’s little possibility of widening the highway at this point; there’s a building in the way. And even if we had three eastbound lanes through the intersection, the traffic lights would still be there, and traffic would still tail back across the bridge.
Sorry folks, but that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it, until we build an elevated expressway, or a tunnel, the length of Harvey Street, which would cost untold billions. In the meantime, there’s actually a pretty good bus service, all the way from Westbank right to downtown Kelowna, fast, comfortable, and departing every fifteen minutes.
I thoroughly recommend it.
M. Price, Kelowna
