Bike lanes were a boondoggle

DEAR EDITOR:

I refer to Amelia Boultbee’s comment regarding funding for the bike lanes and Daniel Pontes’ letter in Wednesday’s Herald.

It is fairly obvious to anybody who has followed the debate on this subject that some senior person on the council’s administration staff became enamored with the sales pitch for this bike lane system and has worked very hard to sell it to both their administration colleagues and to council. It has obviously become a very personal project. However, it has turned into a total boondoggle although most members of council appear to be too blind to see it.

There is a much simpler (and infinitely less expensive) method to constructing these bike lanes — rumble strips.

The demarcation line separating a bike lane from the normal traffic lanes should be a rumble strip. Drivers would be discouraged from driving along the rumble strip by both the discomfort and possible damage to tires. However, if it was necessary to clear the traffic lane for an emergency vehicle, it would be a simple matter to pull right over the rumble strip and wait until the emergency vehicle had passed. This would also have avoided the expense quite early on in the construction where, if I recall correctly, the City had to pay to have somebody's front lawn paved over in order for them to have access to their property.

There is also the question of the very expensive equipment which the Council has had to purchase to keep the bike lanes clear and clean.

If Mr. Pontes is correct in his list of cities in the process of removing some bike lanes, I predict that, in the not to far distant future, this council or a future council will have to find the money to remove all this expensive infrastructure and remedy all the expensive changes made to road junctions and traffic lights Brian Butler Penticton