JOHNSON – Is City council about to jump into another boondoggle?

NOTE: This is the second part of a two-part column on City council boondoggles.

THIS TIME we are talking about the planned Summit Connector TRU pedestrian overpass bridge and the intersection at Summit and McGill.

From what we learned last year, the City put its foot down and forced TRU into accepting their location of this pedestrian overpass over the Summit Connector, linking TRU with all points east of Summit Drive.

TRU originally suggested it be quite close to the intersection, about 70 meters north, where it would serve pedestrians crossing at the McGill and Summit corner, and catch all pedestrians walking from every angle in Sahali East of Summit, Columbia Street, as well as cover the entire shopping district and the housing village at 704 McGill and north along Dalgleish Drive and into the West End of downtown.

Instead, the City has decided to install it 275 meters north of the corner.

Repeat … 275 meters. This is about equal to the new housing building you can see from the connector down the hill there.  That’s almost six Olympic swimming pools of distance from the corner.

That makes this bridge so ridiculously far north from the intersection, that it will only be functionally usable by those at the lowest buildings at the 704 McGill student housing, and the four apartment buildings and a few townhouse complexes on Dalgleish Drive and McBeth Place. And that’s it.

No one south of there, including the upper buildings at 704 McGill and all walking directions south or east of this intersection throughout Sahali, is going to walk nearly 300 meters down that hill to cross over.  Would you?

Go stand at the corner of McGill and Summit, look up McGill towards Columbia and the Co-op gas station there, and then look up Summit towards Superstore, and imagine all the TRU pedestrians walking to this pinch-point corner from Greenstone and Arrowstone and upper Summit housing areas … then imagine them all walking from the intersection, another 275 meters further north along Summit just to go up onto a bridge to cross.

Now imagine they are all going to do that, when the intersection is right there.

Now look across the pedestrian crossing at the corner as it is.  Once across, the trail then cuts diagonally into the campus, and then ask yourself which way YOU would walk carrying bags, books or groceries home to the hundreds of residence suites on campus … or to class.

University students are not idiots … by definition.
They, as most of us do, will travel by the path of least resistance.

There seems to be the idea at the City, that the few apartment buildings and townhouse along Dalgleish Drive and McBeth must be students and they are going to fill up this bridge.  The City needs to research this more.  Very few of these residents are students of TRU.  Most are Kamloops residents.  This is mostly a demographic of people who are not interested in a bridge crossing to the university.

Building this bridge where the City wants to, is a boondoggle beyond unused bike path proportions.  TRU needs to speak up and remove any funding they have allocated, and apply pressure to the City to have this decision revisited, and get this bridge moved as close to the intersection as possible, to catch as many users as possible, and allow for planning of the traffic intersection to match future city growth.  The ramp to the bridge needs to start immediately at the corner.

This entire project needs to be paused and common sense needs to prevail.

One thing though, this bridge will not stop one behaviour we all see every day.  TRU people jaywalking straight across Summit, south of McGill.

We have all played chicken with these bipedal chicanes, who are risking their life to save a walk to the corner.  Someone is going to get hurt there.

This needs to be addressed both from a pure safety standpoint, and as preparation towards guiding pedestrians to the future bridge, whereever it is built.

We need to install a few hundred meters of that heavy duty fencing installed we see along West Victoria and under the Overlander bridge along the CP track, and run it almost all the way from the Summit and McGill corner, and all the way down to almost the Guerin Creek light.

Put it either along the sidewalk there, or on the island in the middle of the road.
Six feet tall or more, unclimbable by the average person.

Bridge or no bridge … you’re going to have to install a crossing barrier here.

You cannot stop people who see an easier way, unless they are stopped by an impassible object.  This is human nature.

So, what have we got going here?

– The bridge project is halted for the bike path boondoggle it is, and sent back to staff with very specific requests to rethink the location and access points to this bridge, so the largest percentage of people will actually use it.
ie: move it 200 meters closer to the corner.

– Let’s get quotes from the company that installed that West Victoria fence, to install one down the Summit Connector.  You’re going to need it anyway.

– From there, upgrade the vehicle traffic pattern at this intersection.  Reconfigure the traffic light to allow a freer flow of cars turning right from McGill down the connector, and rejig when pedestrians can cross.  The way it is, is just building congestion during rush hours.

This entire interchange is more and more becoming a central feeder from one side of town to another.  This corner plays a vital role in our needs to get around, and it needs to upgrade to reflect this reality.

We all know that at busy times, this corner is a pinch-point, and it’s time to fix it.  We installed the connector to make drivers and trucks stay out of downtown, now we have to rethink the access to it.

A bridge is part of that; to move pedestrians away from the road, but it’s only useful if it’s used, and it will only be used … if it’s put in a spot people will want to use it.

This isn’t brain surgery.

As what seems to have happened with the 6^th Avenue bike path, It seems like this council sees this bridge as a flashy new ‘legacy’ item, with no thought towards how it will actually be used a decade from now … or if it will be more like the bike path … not used at all.

Let’s use this as learning opportunities how not to plan projects … and just start again with this TRU corner and its boondoggle bridge the way it is being planned … because none of this makes sense.

In the end, council isn’t listening to the taxpayers of Kamloops about this, but TRU can get the City’s attention and apply real pressure, and they need to do that on behalf of their students as well as for the taxpayer.

Let’s just stop the boondoggles.

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