For the past two years, Carolyn Rice has been trying to do something about the amount of vehicle traffic on Back Road.
She has lived in the neighbourhood for 13 years, but has seen traffic on the collector road increase to the point where it is difficult for her to leave her driveway. Now with the sewer conveyance project's closure of Comox Road, traffic on Back Road (not a designated detour route) has increased exponentially. Rice is also the organizer of Make Back Road Safe, a campaign to prompt action to reduce traffic volumes, speeding, dangerous driving and racing on Back Road.
"We started to do some research, both my husband and I, and we realized pretty quickly that there had been a significant change," Rice said. "when we realized that the sewer project was coming, we also realized that if this was the sort of pattern that was establishing itself on that road, that the sewer project would make that explode.
"That's exactly what's happened."
Rice has been monitoring the traffic volume on Back Road and noticed that the day Comox Road was closed, "traffic went from a high of 2,700 up to 5,200 on day one. It didn't even take a week. By three weeks later, it was 6,400."
Back Road is considered a collector road, which, based on the City of Courtenay's documentation, "should be given paved shoulders for bikes, a marked bike lane, or separate pathways for cyclists."
They also "provide traffic service to less intense developments like residential, schools, churches, parks and low-intensity developments ... lower speeds and moderate to low traffic volumes are standard for collector streets."
The documentation also says that "Direct access to single-family residential properties should be avoided" on collector roads, which, under the guidance, can carry up to 8,000 cars per day.
"That road is a collector road," Rice said. "It (doesn't )meet the standards of a collector road. It's actually an old rural road that has never been upgraded. Properties have been built on that road with (steep) driveways, there's no shoulders, never mind a paved shoulder ... My husband was almost killed on May 16 because of a car coming well over 100 km an hour around that corner," she added. "I feel emotional when I say that, because it scared the shit out of us."
"That road is not designed or built to be a collector road, by provincial standards," she said. "All I know is the volume is huge, and it's all night long. And it is often heavier than the traffic going up Ryan Road."
Rice said that she'd spoken to the RCMP about increasing enforcement, but was told that there were safety and staffing concerns for RCMP to be doing traffic enforcement on the road.
Rice and her neighbours made a delegation to Courtenay Council on July 16. During the meeting, they asked council to install a barricade at the hairpin turn just past Marsland Drive, effectively cutting the route in two and eliminating the possibility of people driving through the area. Councillor Evan Jolicoeur asked staff about that possibility. Staff said that "There are safety considerations for the wider community."
"It is a linkage that we have in the community that has been in place for a significant amount of time and is required and it's a component of our transportation that the technically is inside our transportation plan, it has that designation and it also has in part of our road network plan," the city staff member said.
Later during the meeting, Coun. Doug Hillian made a motion that the city advocate to the province to implement photo radar for municipalities (something which has been up for debate in the past), and "if general municipal implementation is not supported or imminent, council request implementation of a pilot speed enforcement program utilizing photo radar or such other advanced technology is made be available on an urgent back basis on Back Road.
"I'm not naive, I don't believe that that means that the province is going to all of a sudden reverse course on this and grant us this program. But I think it's worth a try," Hillian said. "It remains a corridor that is important to this community. Because of the challenges that we've heard about from our RCMP enforcement, we need this sort of a tool to enable us to get a handle on the frankly large number of irresponsible drivers who really don't care about anybody else as they speed down these residential streets."
