Editor:
Re: Bursting at the seams, Sept. 4 letters.
Thank you to J. Chandler Zehner for your insight into the pressures of living on 128 Street, South Surrey.
I am writing from 24 Avenue and 128 Street where we have lived for 31 years. My comments are as follows.
Ocean Park Village is now a brand devised by local businesses to market their products.
The 128 Street area affected is a 12-block-long arterial road in an area Surrey has designated as urban within the communities of Crescent Heights and Ocean Park.
The quantity and sounds of construction work, heavy trucks, heavy equipment transport and contractors’ trucks with trailers have increased dramatically.
Couple this with the four-plus vehicles that eventually come and go from each of the dream houses. Add to that poorly muffled motorcycles, diesel pickups with custom exhausts, boom cars, muscle cars, the increased frequency of transit buses and, more recently, community buses, and we have the recipe for cacophony on 128 Street.
Traffic noise day and night – and the inability to get respite from it – are a reality for most 128 Street residents. And yes, houses are being torn down to put up the optimum-sized American arts-and-crafts-style house. Why? Because Surrey approves, and some can afford to, in our luxurious corner of a beleaguered world.
Surrey is now engaged in intersection works at 20 and 24 avenues that will move traffic more efficiently along 128 Street. As a result, speeding will increase, even in the 24 Avenue school zone.
As long as RCMP surveillance is minimal along 128 Street and its intersections, and traffic calming is only for select avenues, speeders will blithely proceed.
Change is inevitable in our overpopulated world. What we need is better-thought-out change with a more complete perspective.
We need the increased participation of area residents in Surrey’s planning process to seek solutions so that we can have the community we all want to live in.
Tom Wheeler, Surrey
