Ward 3 issues: bike lanes and lead feet
Ward 3’s incumbent candiate and challengers agree on a few things: St. John’s drivers need to slow down, and the bike lanes in Cowan Heights have got to go.
Incumbent Bruce Tilley, first elected to Ward 3 for two terms starting in 1981, describes himself as a “pro-development” candidate.
“It’s important to have someone on council who’s able to work with the different developers and different companies as we go forward,” said Tilley, who also represented said.
“What I’m trying to achieve here, and I have in the last four years, is we’ve approved a number of projects, and I’m looking forward to working hard in the next four years on a number of projects that will be coming on stream.”
In Ward 3, said Tilley, speeding traffic and bike lanes on Canada and Frecker Drives are the two biggest issues. While speeding can be combatted with stepped-up enforcement, he said, the bike lanes have caused particular headaches on those streets.
“Both these streets have lost the parking on one side, and they’re all upset about it, and I can understand why. What happens is you invite friends in and they can’t get near the house because everybody is parked on the one side.” Tilley said he’s tried for three years to get it straightened out, but last month he made a motion to have the situation resolved.
Tilley calls himself a “full-time councillor, because he’s retired — but won’t give his age. “I’m not going to say that!” he said, laughing.
He’s in favour of a new fiscal arrangement between St. John’s and the province, and says the city also needs new infrastructure and affordable housing funding from the federal government. Challenger Walter Harding says he considers himself a taxpayer, a homeowner and a responsible voter before he considers himself a candidate, but that’s why he’s running.
“Issues that I live with every day aren’t really getting what I consider taken care of,” he said. “I’ve been sort of a life-is-a-spectator-sport kind of guy before, but four years ago I said, you know something? If I don’t see any big changes in the next four years, I’m going to make those changes myself.”
Affordable housing is high among the issues he wants to see improvement on, said Harding, 45, who has spent three decades working in marketing and sales.
“In St. John’s as a whole it’s a massive issue. In the west end especially, there’s a couple of senior citizens complexes that … when we are charging senior citizens — most of them are on fixed incomes — a full mill rate of 8.1 when we do not provide services of garbage collection and snow-clearing, probably two of the biggest budgeted items in the budget, we shouldn’t be taking advantage of seniors like that. They do deserve a little bit of a mill rate decrease.”
Harding says the Cowan Heights bike lanes are a dangerous situation, because it separates drivers from passengers instead of getting them to learn to share the roads.
“There are bike lanes that work in the city, and they work well, and people can cohabitate together. Up in Cowan Heights, it’s a real, real issue,” he said.
“They took parking from one entirety of one side of the street, and now everybody has to park on one side, that’s obviously an issue, but my big concern is the safety factor. I’m not an engineer when it comes to street layout or bike lanes, I can guarantee you that, but I am a pedestrian, and I am a biker, and I am a driver, and I see it as a very dangerous situation.”
Sarah Colborne Penney, who has a background in law, says she’s running for Tilley’s seat because staying at home with her children for the past 10 years — has let her become more involved in the community as a volunteer, offering her legal expertise for various causes. Among her successes, she said, is the new west end high school being built, something for which Penney lobbied for years.
“For me, to continue to do that type of work, I think a natural next step is to take it to city hall and try to shape the city from a more formalized role, rather than a volunteer position,” she said.
“But my motivation has always been the children, and I think the city is changing very rapidly and this is a good opportunity to look to the future and hopefully they will see a future for themselves in the city as well.”
It would be the first time holding any kind of public office for Penney, 43. She’s concerned about city traffic, especially on Waterford Bridge Road and along Topsail Road — including at the intersection with Hamlyn Road, where many students attending the new school will be crossing.
“There’s definitely a concern for pedestrian safety there, because there’s going to be 860-plus students at that school who are going to want to cross that busy four-lane arterial, so we definitely need to be proactive there, because there’s going to be safety concerns, for sure, on the horizon.”
She, too, cites the bike lanes in Cowan Heights as an issue raised by residents.
“Generally I’m in favour of the bike lane program. I think it’s healthy for the individual as well as for the environment, but I don’t think the implementation of the bike lanes was well done in Cowan Heights,” she said. “The majority of residents I’ve heard from want the bike lanes removed.”