Re: Mount Seymour Parkway bike lane draws mixed reviews
Dear Editor,
The debate surrounding the Mount Seymour Parkway (MSP) “safety enhancements” is not just about a speed limit reduction.
It’s not just about a mere “inconvenience” for motorists in favour of a handful of cyclists. It’s not just an attack on working people who use it go to work everyday. It’s actually much, much worse.
It’s an assault on the entire Seymour community. We shouldn’t let proponents of the changes gaslight us into thinking this is an exaggeration.
Consider that the MSP is the sole piece of infrastructure connecting members of the entire community East of Mountain Highway to the rest of the GVRD.
The MSP is residents’ only way in and out, and therefore efficiency and access (including appropriate speed limits) ought not take a backseat to the social engineering ambitions of small vocal lobbies and special interest groups. It is not a “city street”. It is a parkway and it’s there for a reason.
This decision to toy with our vital corridors which we rely on every day has very little to do with safety, and is almost entirely political.
No one voted for this policy; obviously, since no councillor ever ran on this policy.
No politician ever campaigned to the public about it. Perhaps because they wouldn’t get elected if they did. Similarly, no politician ever explained the full rationale nor cost to residents.
You’d think that a nearly 20 percent decrease in baseline traffic speed would require thorough justification. Especially when the far cheaper option of enforcing the original speed limit was virtually never seriously entertained.
These downgrades (I refuse to call them upgrades, because they’re not in anyway so) to the MSP were rammed through without the public’s consent and championed by a very small minority of activists.
It is in no way representative of the interests, nor the demands, nor the needs, of the people who live and work along the Mt. Seymour Parkway.
These degenerations of our vital infrastructure which we all rely on (including emergency vehicles) was undemocratically forced upon our community.
Everything about these changes all the way down to the language used screams of disdain for the voter, disdain for the taxpayer and disdain for families and seniors alike and an insult to their intelligence.
Residents cannot tolerate this reckless failure in governance.
This mishap must be explored, exposed and reversed. Right away, without delay.
Ben Lawton,
North Vancouver
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