by Richard Furness Recent letters have suggested a road connecting Powell River with Squamish would be neither safe, nor economically practical, or even desirable. One letter raised concerns about avalanches and that snowfall along the route would entail sky-high maintenance costs in winter. The other expressed the view that the road wasn’t a good idea anyway, because it would just perpetuate the means of ground travel we’ve been using for the past century or so, with its well-known carbon footprint.
The second was particularly startling, because it backed an earlier proposal calling for a series of bridges linking the Upper and Lower Sunshine Coast with Horseshoe Bay via the various islands, if it were for SkyTrains only. The SkyTrain could then whisk us to and from Vancouver in an hour or so.
Wow, did we hear someone yell, “Bring it on?” What’s not to like? A SkyTrain would ignite the mother of all real estate booms, galvanize the local economy big time and turn the Comox ferry into a busy little run because of the draw from northern Vancouver Island. Let’s not dwell on it, though, because a high-speed train serving people but not commerce, and just our little corner of the province, misses the whole point.
The proposed highway is not about providing Powell River with a fast track to the Lower Mainland—the BC government would be out of its mind to undertake such a project for 20,000 people. As we’ve stated many times, the highway would connect all the communities at mid-province, from the northern tip of Vancouver Island, through Comox and Powell River to Squamish, Whistler, and on up the Sea-to-Sky to the Trans-Canada and beyond. Anyone who thinks that a road like that would not be used doesn’t understand the impact any road has, for miles in all directions.
As for the snowpack, is there anyone, today, who thinks we’d be better off without the Coquihalla Highway or Highway 3 between Hope and Princeton? Both highways cross passes at elevations higher than the Lausman Pass which, at 1,250 metres (4,100 feet), is the highest point on the proposed route. The other passes are all snowbound at one time or another in the winter, but that’s never stopped us from building roads over them.
Clinging to the old days, great as they may have been, would just doom us, and future generations, to a long economic twilight; it would leave our region and others with more and more boarded-up buildings, a shrinking tax base, and fewer and fewer businesses to provide the amenities. If you don’t believe it, count the yellow pages in the past two phone books.
We now have the support, in principle, of three regional districts, two chambers of commerce, one first nation, the Town of Comox, Comox Valley Airport Commission and four other organizations. The only reason there aren’t more is our lack of funds.
Come on, people. The way lies ahead, not back where we came from.
Richard Furness is vice-president of the Third Crossing Society.
