JOHNSON – More short but hot takes on Kamloops traffic and politics

HOT TAKES for July 2024, another  short list of a few annoying/ niggly things that don’t warrant their own column, but are still at the level of … A Hot Take. (See also the June instalment, JOHNSON – A few short but hot takes on traffic and politics.)

First up, join the chorus, regarding the pedestrian bridge across Summit to TRU.

Let’s break it down in the simplest way possible. The exact same safety result would happen if a heavy-duty fence (like the new one along West Victoria by the train tracks) was installed up the center line of Summit, from the light at McGill all the way down near Guerin Creek road. Then reprogram the traffic light sequence at that McGill corner to allow right turn flow to happen before ped crossing turns on, and for the light to better reflect ped crossing timings.

Boom … better safety. Problem solved, and would cost $100k instead of $5M.

… and we wouldn’t have to look at the monstrosity they are proposing.

I dont need a TRU or City report to tell me anything else … but thanks.

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This one doesn’t affect many, but if you are one of those, it’s a real eyeroll.

Let’s go for a drive up the Summit Connector, then turn west bound at the Guerin Road light, and head up that newer cut called Hillside Drive N … towards the industrial 1400 block McGill Road area up top there.

Half way up, there’s a road to the left coming from the University, actually called University Drive N … but you can’t turn left onto it … forcing you to continue up the hill to pull a U-turn and come back down to it, if that road is where you need to go.

This way in to University Drive is the closest possible access to 90% of TRU’s parking spaces situated on the north end of campus.  If you live anywhere north of TRU … you can’t get in there the most efficient way at all.  Instead, you get to clog up the traffic flow by driving all the way around to the McGill Road access points, and drive all the way through campus to the parking lot.

The design at this corner originally included a left turn onto University Drive N.  It was going to either be a left turn lane, or a right lane to a perpendicular intersection thing.  It is half done, the dirt patch to the right at that spot was made big enough … it’s just not finished.

Let’s git ‘er done.

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While we are in the area:

To the occasional city bus driver turning left from Summit northbound onto McGill westbound.

Cars and other vehicles that drive up the connector south bound, that want to turn onto McGill towards TRU, are very much on the correct side of traffic law to continue onto the right lane on McGill, by first yielding to any traffic in that McGill right lane … coming straight through the intersection from Columbia.  They do not need to yield to left turning traffic from Summit north bound onto the same McGill, as there is a left lane to turn onto.

Guess what certain bus drivers like to do?

As they turn that left from Summit onto McGill, some of our illustrious transit drivers assume they have an over-riding right to cut off those law-abiding cars … and absorb the right lane as well … even though there is more than enough room to turn the corner properly in a bus and stay in the left lane.

Their response to bullying their way around the corner, and being inconvenienced by a car that assumes the bus driver will turn a proper corner, is to blast their air horn … on a corner in which other bus drivers manage to negotiate just fine using the left lane only.

It’s simple, you’re not special … follow the law.  If other bus drivers can do it, so can you.

Don’t be lazy.  Just because you need the right lane to stop at the bus stop a block up, does not mean you need to break the law, change lanes properly like the rest of us.

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Quite a while ago, we heard mumblings about a potential redo of the Hwy#1 Westbound offramp, onto Pacific Way South, and the left turn light towards the Shell and up to Aberdeen was supposed to be reworked so there are two left turn lanes instead of the existing single left turn lane.

This is a no brainer.

Again … get it done.

EVERYONE who lives above this spot … is nodding their head right now.

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The newest large apartment building is nearly done at Sun Rivers, located at 580 E. Shuswap.

The next time you cross from downtown to Valleyview or head over the Hwy 5 bridge northbound, look towards Sun Rivers … you’ll see it, you literally can’t miss it.  Lower down, on the right.

Sun Rivers is a community where muted and darker colours predominate, and where this community at a glance from afar, always seemed to blend in with the surrounding natural area.  Well … that’s no more.  Now a bleach white eyesore box apartment building predominates.

Who in charge of such things at Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, approved this?

As well, who actually designed this? Was someone sitting in some corporate office in a major city somewhere, surrounded by drawings and Pantone colour chips?

Did they ever go to the site and look around, and consider the local palette and sensibilities, or just default to the rage popular colour schemes seen in larger cities “let’s make it white so it stands out” … and transferred the idea to a muted dirt brown and sage green hillside … located far from their office?

Very poor colour design.

Give it a few years, it likely will become very beige anyway.  It gets windy over there.

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To the good flag people working that pyramid construction long timeline infrastructure job out at the end of Tranquille, before the new (and very cool) statue memorializing Royal Canadian Airforce Captain Jennifer Casey:

My hand wave means; “I’m doing under 20 kms, the sign says 30 kms and I’m observing your handheld slow sign and giving as much room as possible … your safety is important to me … so stop yelling at me, I’m not doing anything wrong.”

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And one more on the local political scene without going near the well trodden story.

Bill Sarai a while back withdrew as the NDP candidate for the upcoming provincial election.

Call his reason … what it is.

He says he wants to ‘focus on local issues’ which is a misdirect from the fact he knows or has been told that maybe it wasn’t so smart to announce his candidacy before the provincial party even vetted him.

Beyond that oopsidaisy … he likely would not have won the nomination or the seat anyway.

When someone like him says ‘focus on local issues’, when we all know that local issues are as bad as they are, this all means he can’t focus on actual local issues anyway … so in the end he is obfuscating, backing out, and accepting the council cheque till election.

Voters aren’t idiots.

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.