REVERSE COURSE
Councillors asking province to advance plans for interchange at Boucherie, Westlake
West Kelowna’s new city council has done a 180 on the idea of more interchanges along the Highway 97 corridor.
Council agreed this week to ask the provincial government to press ahead with previously announced plans for interchanges at Boucherie Road and Westlake/Hudson Road.
“Whatever we can do to reduce congestion on Highway 97, I’m all for it,” Mayor Gord Milsom said. “I think interchanges would make for faster and safer passages for commuters.”
“I think this is an absolutely great idea,” said Coun. Jayson Zilkie, who said he commutes to work every day in Kelowna. “I know what the overpass did at Westside Road . . . that created great traffic flow.”
A motion to ask the government to build the interchanges was introduced by Coun. Rick de Jong. He had been the only member of the previous council to support the idea of building the interchanges at Boucherie and Westlake/Hudson.
Other members of the previous council, led by then-mayor Doug Findlater, were concerned about the possible evolution of Highway 97 into a full-fledged freeway.
The city risked becoming a community defined by an unsightly series of interchanges in which it was harder to develop attractive, pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods, critics said.
“We need to draft a letter stating we are really not in favour of (the Boucherie) interchange project. We have to start being really vocal about this,” Rosalind Neis, then city councillor, said in April 2017.
The previous council’s opposition to additional interchanges, however, was not widely shared in the community, where thousands of people drive every day into Kelowna for work. A Ministry of Transportation public consultation process found three-quarters of the 400 people who gave their views at open houses were strongly in favour of new interchanges at Boucherie and Westlake/Hudson.
“If we can get provincial money to improve our intersections along Highway 97 to increase safety for the 80 per cent plus people who live in West Kelowna and work in Kelowna, in my mind, why wouldn’t we support that?” de Jong said in April 2017.
Neis and other councillors who opposed interchanges were defeated in the recent civic election. Findlater, who ran successfully for a councillor position, cast the lone vote at this week’s meeting against asking the province to build the interchanges.
Milsom said he understood Ministry of Transportation officials wanted to meet with municipal representatives early in 2019 to discuss the two interchange projects.