Editor:
Re: Open House, Feb. 23 for 196thSt/56 Avenue Overpass
Having attended this presentation by the RBRC Funding Partners, I noted the general unhappiness and anger with the concept from all perspectives by the attendees. Considering there were about 200 attendees, this represents a community dissatisfaction level about five times greater on a per capita basis than then expressed over the Mufford Crescent/64th Avenue overpass through the Hudson’s Bay Farm in Langley Township.
It is too bad the respective Councils of the Township and City didn’t have the foresight and fortitude to have applied to the Canadian Transportation Agency(CTA) to re-route the freight traffic along the CN main line and BNSF corridor. This was originally proposed by the Lower Mainland Planning Board in 1968 and is still the optimum solution. This application to the CTA backed up by an injunction application to the B.C. Supreme Court would have gone a long way to force a better solution than the one Langley is currently enjoying.
Township Council seems to have no compunction whatsoever about spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on fruitless litigation to defend positions they know are indefensible yet won’t make minimal investments on a CTA bet which would have immeasurably improved the lives of residents of the Langleys.
If the Councils and Mayors of the day, backed up with the legal firepower at their disposal, had stood as one against the RBRC, we would have had a different outcome than the one we are currently saddled with. Regrettably the Councillors who are still in office are unable to see the folly of their participation and even worse, are unrepentant for same.
An application to the CTA could still be made by the Langleys and with minimal concrete poured yet, could save a substantial amount of money and inconvenience for all.
Lee Lockwood, Aldergrove