Downtown Corridor: Improvement or Unnecessary Upheaval?
Editorial
Once there was a small city in Northern BC, with over 40 km of unpaved roads and potholes galore. The sidewalks that were installed in the early 1970s needed replacing, and wheelchair accessibility was hard to find. The mayor and council of the day made it their mission to rectify the shoddy infrastructure for the benefit of their citizens.
Fast forward 25 years – the 40 km of unpaved roads have almost all been paved. Some of the sidewalks have been replaced or repaired. In certain areas of the city, wheelchair accessibility has been improved. Yet there is still a plethora of potholes, all over the city. Potholes that never get repaired, because of local government’s fixation on “improving the downtown corridor”.
This is the part of the city that had already received improvements in sidewalks, accessibility, and beautification. There were new garbage bins, benches, lighting, and giant flower planters. The historical society and museum had installed little plaques throughout the downtown, explaining the city’s history, with photographs of former buildings and the pioneers who built them. There were even some trees that had managed to survive various bouts of vandalism. The city had been trying to grow trees downtown since the 1980s, but some in our community thought it would be funny to cut them down or otherwise damage them.
So, for a city whose streets were once mud with wooden sidewalks, which evolved into a thriving agricultural and industrial community with two, four-lane arterial roads crossing in the centre, these improvements of the early to mid-2000s were wonderful.
Getting to that point has been quite a journey. When I was a kid, seeing logging trucks and oilfield equipment driving through town up Mackenzie Street was an everyday occurrence. But it took a toll on our infrastructure. So, when the city took over the maintenance of this road from the provincial government, huge trucks, other than for local delivery and parades, were rerouted to the Bypass Roads. Which is where they should’ve been in the first place.
For the last four years, the city has been “improving” this street. The infrastructure beneath the road, namely water and sewer, needs upgrading. It was put in decades ago and was not meant to last forever. But taking a four-lane (two lanes in each direction) arterial road, in a growing industrial and agricultural centre, and cutting it down to 2 lanes, with two-way turning lanes in the middle of the road – which by the way, are unusable in the winter because they’re for snow storage – is ridiculous.
And be careful turning out of any of the Avenues onto 100 Street, especially if you’re heading north. Giant black planter boxes block the view of on-coming traffic, which will no doubt be bumper to bumper – like rush-hour in Vancouver – once this year’s construction is finished and the road opens to through traffic again. So, you won’t be able to join the flow of traffic, even if you can see.
This is not a sleepy little tourist town, where people spend their days popping in and out of cafes and galleries, touring historic buildings and strolling through parks and public gardens. It is a bustling, vibrant, industrial community that the transportation infrastructure needs to keep pace with. Not work against.
Because of course, while all the “improvements” are going on – as they will for another year – all the traffic of this very busy city, is being rerouted to side roads. Where there are potholes galore. On two lane roads. All the traffic that would normally go up the four-lane road is reduced to dodging potholes on streets insufficient for the city’s growing motoring population.
For years, the city and the Regional District worked hard to get our fair share of provincial tax dollars, most of which came from industry in the Peace, to carry out much needed infrastructure improvements. Which is how the paving of the 40 kms of previously gravelled roads came about. Now however, it seems like we have 40 kms of endless potholes.
What about the north and south ends of 100th Street? The parts visitors first see when they arrive in the city. At the north end, the 4-lane road was recently upgraded with sidewalks, lighting, benches, and garbage cans – so it matched the previous downtown décor. This has only been done in the last few years. Is it going to be ripped out and replaced to match the downtown? And waste taxpayer dollars? Same question applies to the two-block section off the Alaska Highway. It’s also green. The weeds in the sidewalks are green too, but I guess those are natural plantings.
Is it going to be left in its hodgepodge state? Are we going to change the slogan of the city from the Energetic City to the Erratic City? Or are we going to waste more taxpayer dollars to pretty-up the whole road? Even if the money comes from the Peace River Agreement – Fair Share to those of us who have been around since before the agreement was negotiated – those are still OUR dollars. Not the generosity of a benevolent provincial government.
Never mind. At least it looks pretty.