Lake Country drivers most often headed out of town

Report says 70% of all trips cross into Kelowna or some other municipality

Lake Country is even more of a bedroom community than is West Kelowna, transportation patterns suggest.

Nearly 70 per cent of all trips made by residents of Lake Country cross into another municipality, the most by far being into Kelowna.

A much smaller number of trips by Lake Countryians are toward Vernon or past Kelowna to West Kelowna and the South Okanagan.

Information about the travel habits of the 14,000 people who live in Lake Country is part of a report being presented to municipal officials in the Central Okanagan.

Just under 60 per cent of all daily trips made by residents of West Kelowna, population 33,000, are into Kelowna, the same report indicates.

As separate municipalities, there is no provision for the sharing of revenue from property taxes to pay for roads in a way that reflects actual travel patterns.

So that portion of taxes paid by residents of Lake Country and West Kelowna earmarked for roads stays entirely within those municipalities, even though many people from those communities spend their day driving in and around Kelowna.

“We don’t send any money to Kelowna for their roads and we’re not going to,” Lake Country Mayor James Baker said Wednesday.

“A lot of people from Kelowna drive through Lake Country every day, causing big traffic jams at corners like Highway 97 and Beaver Lake Road and Glenmore Road,” Baker said.

“We’ve asked Kelowna to help us with that and they say, ‘Hey, it’s nothing to do with us. That’s for you and the ministry (of transportation) to sort out,’” Baker said.

Many Lake Country residents work at the airport or UBC Okanagan, which are at the far northern end of Kelowna, Baker said. The relatively short commute takes them into Kelowna, he acknowledges, but they are travelling on the highway, not on municipally maintained roads.

Commuter information is being presented to municipal officials as part of a plan that could lead to development of a new Central Okanagan transportation authority. The idea will be further discussed at a meeting on June 15.

Baker said he hopes more transit planning could be done locally rather than in Victoria through BC Transit.

‘“Local people know the area best, and they could use that knowledge to get (transit) route planning done right in the first place,” Baker said.