Editor:
Well, what a fine mess we have here!
Courtesy of a truck once again spilling its load, Highway 17 was closed for several hours southbound on Monday.
Traffic headed south on this route was rerouted through Ladner, a community that many of the ferry-bound travellers are totally unfamiliar with. This caused major traffic issues throughout Ladner as the affected traffic fumbled through the unanticipated and unmarked detour.
Then we had Highway 17 northbound, which was nothing more than a parking lot. Traffic headed northbound was backed up past 28th Avenue. The traffic in that lineup sat for hours trying to get to the only exit between Tsawwassen and Ladner, which, thanks to the brain trust that removed the exit at 28th Avenue, is Ladner Trunk Road.
How good does the idea of removing the only opportunity to exit the highway between Tsawwassen and Ladner look now? Pretty smart to take it out and replace it with a private, gated, "farmer use" only overpass.
How many of our tax dollars funded that little pet project to benefit such a small number of people while literally inconveniencing thousands Monday alone?
This is a perfect example of the poor planning that residents have come to expect for dealing with traffic here in South Delta. And yet it appears our mayor and council still insist on trying to bend over backwards to add thousands of cars and people into the mix by continuing to consider and reconsider housing development proposals for the Southlands, despite residents repeatedly pointing out this obvious problem.
They also know the Tsawwassen First Nation is already going to add significantly to the number of vehicles trying to travel this route daily. What a perfect example of bureaucratic incompetence.
No doubt fingers will be pointed in the days to come at everything from unprofessional driving behaviour in the trucking community to municipal/provincial/ federal decisions that have caused the highway problems, but the real problem is simply numbers.
An accident like this should not shut down an entire community, but it did. It makes me wonder what will happen if a true disaster occurs because we are once again proving that South Delta is woefully unprepared to deal with anything out of the ordinary and still remain as a functioning community. How very pathetic!
Patricia Moore
