Dear Editor:
Once again, residents of the Seymour area were held hostage for hours, on Nov. 5, because Mount Seymour Parkway was closed between Riverside Drive and Lillooet Road for 24 hours.
On any Saturday or Sunday, thousands of cars from all over the Lower Mainland invade Seymour to access hiking and skiing, go mountain biking and visit Deep Cove. Closing the main road and approach to Highway 1 created an enormous traffic jam getting in or out of the area that lasted till 9:30 p.m.
Dollarton Highway is now a succession of poorly timed lights that did not allow traffic flow through Maplewood, and has been made worse by the light at the Dollarton on-ramp to the freeway which backs up cars every day, not just on weekends.
We spent an hour and a half trying to drive from the southbound highway exit at Brooksbank to our house in the east, and neighbours leaving Deep Cove in the afternoon spent nearly three hours getting onto the Second Narrows Bridge. At 6:30 p.m. traffic heading west was backed up solid along Dollarton to Cates Park and to Parkgate Village on Mount Seymour Parkway.
Residents are used to being compromised anytime there is even a slight problem on the bridge, but it is becoming more frequent and I believe constitutes a safety concern. I don't think ambulances would have been able to get in or out of Seymour on Nov. 5, and if there is ever a major emergency like a forest fire or chemical spill, what hope is there of escape?
The population of Seymour continues to grow and the district is pushing more housing developments and densification. What the area really needs is a third access for everyone.
Susan Berry
Seymour
Dear Editor:
Let us call a spade a bloody shovel – the unholy traffic mess started by trees down near Lillooet Road on Nov. 4 is really due to politicians’ inaction. The North Shore is poorly served by both its politicans and local newspaper as none shout for the building of new bridges. The North Shore desperately needs four new road bridges: Lions Gate, Ironworkers, Lynn and Seymour rivers. Without new bridges and continued large condo developments, the traffic jams on overworked present bridges will only worsen as we have seen for the last 18 years.
As another reader rightly pointed out, the North Shore News blithely ignored the whole story in print, as it does with many traffic jam events, and I had to scour the Nov. 9 print edition twice to find any mention of traffic – buried deep at page 41 – with an unrelated story.
Zoltan Bosnormeny
District of North Vancouver
Dear Editor:
On the night of Friday, Nov. 4, a mighty wind blew across the North Shore.
The following morning Mount Seymour Parkway was blocked off in both directions from Riverside Drive to Lillooet Road.
What followed was traffic mayhem to an extent I have never witnessed before in my 50 years of living in the area.
Every road was backed up in every direction headed to the highway or trying to get to another part of the North Shore, and not moving.
What caused the closure? To this day, I have not seen a satisfactory answer to that question even though I looked wherever I thought I could find out.
I expected I would get a full account of the impact in the North Shore News, but even though I read the paper front to back, not a word, not a report.
I expect better from my local community paper but perhaps no one from the North Shore News lives in the Seymour area and therefore was not affected.
Barbara Emo
North Vancouver
Editor’s note: Windstorm leaves more than 5,300 North Vancouver residents without power ran online. On Saturday, Nov. 5, Mount Seymour Parkway, between Riverside Drive and Lillooet Road, was closed as crews repaired downed power lines.
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