Malahat neighbours go to court to stop highway access shift

Proposed safety improvement actually raises risks, says a group of frustrated Aspen Road residents

Arguing a proposed “safety” improvement to the Malahat will actually make highway access from their neighbourhood more dangerous, a group of Aspen Road area residents has filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court to stop the work and have the intersection redesigned.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Bill Eller, who filed the petition on behalf of about 35 homeowners in the Aspen Road area, just south of the Malahat Village.

“We’ve got compelling safety arguments, and that’s all we’re arguing.

“There’s nothing in the conversation about convenience or nuisance or anything like that.”

The province announced on July 27 a $34-million project to expand five kilometres of the highway to four lanes with wider shoulders, add three kilometres of median barrier and install new lighting, a new turnaround and improved access.

Vehicles entering the highway at Aspen Road can now turn right to head north, or left across two northbound lanes to get to the single southbound lane.

Planned changes will add a second southbound lane, but there will be no lefthand turns from Aspen Road onto the highway. Vehicles wanting to travel south will need to turn right, cross to a centre turn lane, go 800 metres to a new turnaround, cross two lanes of southbound traffic, and then merge into southbound traffic.

“Our argument is that it’s, on the whole, more dangerous in the sense that we’ll have a [new] acceleration lane when we come out of Aspen Road on the right turn.

“Then we have to merge into the slow lane, and then we have to merge into the fast lane, and then we have to leave the highway into a left-turn lane,” Eller said

“Then we have to cross two southbound lanes of unrestrained traffic in a compound curve with marginal sightlines.”

The residents believe it would be safer to either put a signal at Aspen Road or install a “protected T” intersection. That would permit drivers to cross the two lanes of northbound traffic as they do now, but enter a southbound “refuge” lane to help them merge from the centre of the highway into the fast lane of southbound traffic.

Another resident, who didn’t want her name used, said the current design will leave the Aspen Road residents attempting to cross two lanes of southbound traffic, often during rush hour, at the spot where Dave Paulin died Nov. 18, 2015, when his southbound car was struck by a northbound pickup that crossed the centre line near Malahat Village.

“It’s a much lesser site than what we have at Aspen Road, [with] poorer sightlines and much steeper elevation lines.,” she said.

“We are going to be the only neighbourhood between Victoria and Nanaimo that is going to be forced into all on-the-highway manoeuvring and into a situation that we unanimously perceive to be far more dangerous for us,” she said.

The residents say in the petition there was only minimal consultation, that the province failed to give the residents written notice of its plans for the intersection, and that the proposed design is contrary to public safety best practices.

Mike Hicks, who represents the residents in his sprawling Juan de Fuca Electoral Area, said the ministry’s one-size-fitsall policy is wrong.

“The bottom line is that they want safety and they want to be able to turn to get to Victoria,” Hicks said.

The province had not filed a response to the petition by Monday. Because of the delay while the province awaits election results, a ministry spokesperson could offer no comment.