Playground and trucking routes don’t mix, warn Squamish industries.
The District of Squamish’s newest park, which features a waterfront pump track, has thrown a speed bump into a trucking route used by both the logging industry and Squamish Terminal. Having tidied up the two-acre waterfront space along Loggers Lane, across from O’Siyam Pavilion Park, the municipality lowered the speed limit from 50 kilometres per hour to 30 kilometres between Vancouver and Victoria streets. While truckers understand the need for the lowered speeds, they want a solution that accommodates their work requirements, the district’s director of engineering Rod MacLeod said.
“They recognize that the [reduced] speed is a good idea given the proximity to parks, but they really would like to see the parks moved or them moved,” he told council at a regular business meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 2.
Loggers Lane is designated a commercial truck route in the district’s Multi-Modal Transportation Plan (MMTP). The document also outlines two alternative links to Highway 99 including Third Avenue and the idea of building a road parallel to the railway line through the Squamish Estuary – the Seventh Avenue Corridor.
District staff recommended that council move forward the Seventh Avenue Corridor. The Integrated Flood Hazard Management Plan examines placing a sea dike along the western boundary of downtown. Once drafts are laid out, then work can proceed concurrently on the possibility of combining the dike and the roadway into one right of way, MacLeod said.
If the motion was backed, staff would present the Seventh Avenue Corridor as a part of the 2015 budget process, he noted. Plans and costing could be drawn up, with the idea of getting shovels in the ground in 2016, MacLeod said.
Council told staff to hold their horses. Squamish Mayor Rob Kirkham said he wanted to see all the options for commercial truck routes and costing, before focusing on the Seventh Avenue Corridor.
The district needs to come up with a solution that won’t take years to implement, Coun. Ted Prior said. And the Seventh Avenue Corridor isn’t one of them, he stated.
“Until we got some major financing we are looking at a pie in the sky,” Prior said.
Council voted to look at trucking route options overall.
