Put rails on Lochside, Galloping Goose trails

Re: “Trains better option than highways, interchanges,” letter, Aug. 2. The letter-writer claims the E&N should be rebuilt before the McKenzie interchange is built. The interchange will do far more than the rail aficionados realize to mitigate the Colwood Crawl.

Watch traffic at McKenzie, Admirals and the Trans-Canada Highway during rush hour and it becomes obvious there are more drivers turning onto or off the route to and from the Pat Bay Highway than are headed into Victoria proper. The vast majority of us poor travellers would not benefit from the proposed E&N commute.

If you want to not build the interchange, then help promote the real boon to commuter, which would be putting rails back on the Lochside and Galloping Goose trails and moving people to and from the two peninsulas.

The problem is not the thousand or so from up-Island, it’s the multi-thousand daily commuters travelling into Victoria from toward Sooke and Sidney. Get them onto trains and the highway is back to a manageable number of daily users.

On our trips down-Island, we seldom run into traffic congestion until we are south of Goldstream Park and as we progress toward Victoria, it gets worse. Rails on the Galloping Goose would do more to alleviate traffic congestion than the E&N can ever hope to achieve.

It might cost more than the pretend $20 million the Island Corridor Foundation has foolishly claimed, but it will garner a heck of a lot more support from people stuck in the “Crawl.” Dennis Dalla-Vicenza Port Alberni