The Editor,
Re. “PoMo gets look at Ioco connector options” (The Tri-City News, May 30).
A sincere thank you to The Tri-City News for its recent and very balanced reporting on the traffic management options Port Moody must consider for managing current and future impacts of population growth in our city as well as those coming from Anmore and Belcarra.
Too often the public debate about traffic relief on Ioco Road has been top-heavy with the concerns of activists who hold very narrow views on future development and aggressively discourage alternatives to piling more traffic onto Ioco Road.
Port Moody residents along the Ioco Road corridor have long been promised relief from the ever-increasing volume of summer visitors and burgeoning residential traffic load.
The daily task of exiting driveways and roadways which connect with Ioco Road is increasingly dangerous. Traffic calming measures have done little to reduce speeding — especially at night — and it gets worse every year.
As The Tri-City News reported, development of the existing road right-of-way across Bert Flinn Park is the key to several traffic route options for effectively managing future traffic impacts. The existing right-of-way should remain a viable alternative.
In the years ahead, Port Moody residents will be impacted by growing traffic volumes, not only from Port Moody’s Ioco lands but from thousands of additional residents already planned for Anmore and Belcarra.
This is just the start of what is coming.
The Burrard Thermal and Ioco Tank Farm sites may be repurposed for industrial development.
Safe, efficient traffic management is also critical to public safety — increased fire hazards associated with climate change could threaten our local forests and parks, forcing evacuations. So would an earthquake and both residents and emergency services personnel will need more than one dedicated route in and out of the area.
I am not anti-park and neither are my neighbours.
However, it’s important to remember that millions of dollars of potential tax revenue were sacrificed to create Bert Flinn Park and the decision to retain a road right of way across the park is the foundation of that decision. Even now, two decades later, we still don’t know exactly when the road will be required.
It makes absolutely no sense to remove this option now.
Let’s keep our options open until all development proposals have been presented and approved and only then let the councils of the day, including Anmore and Belcarra, work together to determine whether the roadway system needs to be completed.
Wilhelmina Martin
Port Moody
