Roadway plans threaten Mission neighbourhood

[John Zeger]

The character and safety of a Mission neighbourhood are being threatened by the City's plans to turn a dead-end street into an arterial road. The Daily Courier reports that "the city plans to widen Gordon Drive, Paret and Stonybrook to three lands and the extend Stonybrook through S-shaped curves to Frost Road to handle traffic from new residential development." Ann Murphy, an neighbourhood resident has concerns with the city's plans as they would negatively affect neighbourhood character and safety. She is also concerned the city is removing mature trees along the road right-of-way. Murphy and 43 other neighbourhood residents have signed a petition opposing the city's plans.

This is all illustrative of the negative impacts of population growth on neighbourhoods. With rapid population growth such as Kelowna is experiencing, it's almost impossible to have such growth without some damage being done. Unfortunately, the attitude that a lot of residents have is "we're not opposed to development, we just don't want it here [in our backyard]. This attitude allows city council and the city administration to repeatedly harm one neighbourhood after another as the NIMBY attitude of neighbourhood residents is ignored. If only residents across the city could see that all of their neighbourhoods are under attack then maybe they would mount a more unified and effective opposition.

[Rick Shea]

The extension of Gordon will, for now, be completed to Frost Road, to allow more traffic out of the Southridge area and (as yesterday's accident shows) a much-needed alternative route out of the Kettle Valley area. The growth in that area has created significant traffic safety issues. It is ironic then that this will have such an impact on the safety of an existing neighbourhood -- ironic, but typical.

Future plans show Gordon being extended and eventually looping around to the east into Crawford Estates, where the residents there have genuine concerns as well. This would allow the next large phase of residential development in an area that is now used by hikers, mountain bikes, dirt bikes, and a variety of wildlife -- more sprawl, more loss of wildlife habitat (including for the Western bluebirds who seem to be increasingly displaced by this sort of development, by Vintage Landing, and by so many others), and fewer recreational opportunities for the people of Kelowna.

Whatever happened to the "save the south slopes" movement from the last decade? Where are they when we need them? Have they just given up in the face of the onslaught?

[Rick Shea]

Since so many people in Kelowna have asked me to take a hike, I did. I just took my dog for a 10 km hike into the very area where the Gordon Road extension past Frost Road will eventually be. It's quite an experience to have a red-tailed hawk circle 4 times not 20 feet over your head, and to unexpectedly see a kingfisher at a lake that seemed too small to support fish (but they were there).

I hope that that experience can be preserved for my children, and for their children as well.

[Rick Shea]

We have a city council that has said that they are dedicated to reducing sprawl. Yet, here we have the new Gordon extension open now, not only to serve all the very new houses in the Quarry, Southridge, Bellevue Ridge and other areas, but also to serve the forthcoming neighbourhood 3 development even further away from the centre of town.

This extension funnels traffic through what used to be a very quiet dead end street and, to top it off, council has decided to use "traffic calming" measures in order to keep speeds down near the posted 50 km/hr.

So, we have what will be a relatively well-used commuter route through a residential neighbourhood, where cars are forced to travel at speeds where the engines are running inefficiently, so they consequently contribute even more to air pollution. Let's not even talk about all the school zones!

Now, that's planning.