1446 replies to this topic

[RFS]

Yes, around 50 years ago!

 

But Corey is right, the "real" Duncan was a ways to the West when the original by-pass route was built.

As a kid, driving to Parksville to camp on the beach at Rathtrevor, you'd fly right through Duncan. There wasn't much at all on the by-pass.

Now of course, that "highway" is a main drag like Colwood or Langfords main drag is.

 

The original Duncan that the by-pass by-passed is here:

https://www.google.c...!7i13312!8i6656

Right but 50 years is a long time.  It isn't realistic to expect things to have not changed.  I guess in a perfect world towns and cities wouldn't grow and we would never need to build new and additional highways and bypasses after half a century

[Cassidy]

In a perfect world, all of those cross streets (which definitely didn't exist in the numbers they do now) would have been eliminated, leaving only a couple that would get you to the East side of Duncan ... and leaving that by-pass to functions a by-pass (I suppose a single overpass would be the ideal).

 

All the by-pass does now is function as Duncan's de facto main drag for everybody who lives in the area, and then you mix in the up/down island thru traffic ... and you've got the mess you've got now.

 

But in the ever expanding Duncan, there was no compelling reason to introduce a the 7 or so cross and T- streets and their associated stop lights to the by-pass.

 

The fix now would be to introduce a complete by-pass that started at Koksilah (or Cowichan Station) and by-passed to the West, entering the 19 again at Somenos. Those bridges over the river on the highway now must be due for replacement ... the small bridge was there when I was a kid.

[Mike K.]

Yeah! That’s the route that’ll likely materialize if he pursue a bypass.

[nerka]

All due respect, but you haven't lived here for that long then.  Try driving thru Nanaimo, which was the only option back in the 80s and earlier, on bath tub day weekend when its 30+ out as an example.  Even a lot of the approaches to Nanaimo were 1 lane each direction.  A lot was 2 lanes each direction, but it took forever going north on summer weekends

If you have lived here a while you would recall that at approximately the same time as the new Highway 19 inland from Parksville to Campbell River, Nanaimo got its parkway and Victoria got its freeway. The 1990's project focused on what were then some of the worst stretches: everything north of Parksville,  the stretch through Nanaimo, and Victoria to the West Shore.  There were some modest upgrades between nanaimo and Goldstream, but at the time that did not seem like the worst stretch of road

[UrbanRail]

So change the boundaries of the park, been done before and will be done again. Y

 

Its not as simple as changing the boundaries of the park.

Edited by UrbanRail, 24 January 2019 - 09:50 PM.

[splashflash]

Its not as simple as changing the boundaries of the park.

The E&N corridor is between the two parks. To avoid moving the park boundaries, deactivate and abandon the railway, route a new highway along that corridor and make the current Goldstream alignment to Tunnel Mountain the alternate route.

[rjag]

Its not as simple as changing the boundaries of the park.

 

Sure it is, parks are added and changed all the time. It takes political will and someone willing to ignore the noise from the banana crowd

 

If a reasonable argument can be made that would show the reduced risk to the Goldstream river by moving the flow of traffic a few hundred metres to the west then why not? 

Edited by rjag, 26 January 2019 - 11:51 AM.