Vernon council waits to lobby Department of Transportation on unfinished projects – Vernon News

Photo: Darren Handschuh

Vernon City Council will not push the province to complete unfinished Ministry of Transportation and Transit (MoTT) projects identified in a 2015 study in hopes that a new study will create projects intended to serve both pedestrians and cars – not just vehicles.

At Monday’s regular meeting, city transportation manager Danielle DeVries recommended the council wait until a city study is completed before pushing MoTT on these unfinished projects.

“The main reason is that these (unfinished projects) are all major infrastructure projects to improve the highway and interactive roads for cars. And I believe the intent of this council is to look at how we can make highways safer for everyone who uses them, not just car drivers.

“So the study we’re working on with MoTT will be a bit more comprehensive for all road users, and we’ll also include every intersection where we have a potential crossing for pedestrians and cyclists, not just this list. So ours will be more extensive.”

The city is currently working with the ministry and conducting a road corridor study to determine safe crossings for active transportation throughout the city. The study should be completed around February.

Advice. Brian Guy said the council should develop a strategy to convince the ministry to complete projects identified by the city after DeVries confirmed the unfinished projects from 2015 were priorities identified by the MoTT.

“If they can’t even persuade themselves to do their own priority projects. We will need a lot of work to convince them to carry out our priority projects,” Guy declared in council.

DeVries said the city had a kickoff meeting with the department last week and MoTT is now studying the intersections of Highway 97, 30th Avenue and 32nd Avenue following recent crashes.