Shawnigan Lake Community Forum

At least the issue is starting to get some attention - I just came across a great article featuring Al Brunet, a board member of the Shawnigan Lake Business Assocation:

Cowichan News Leader Pictorial wrote:

By Krista Siefken - Cowichan News Leader Pictorial
Published: April 21, 2010 11:00 AM

This is Main Street, Shawnigan Lake,” Al Brunet says while navigating his vehicle between gaping potholes and rough ridges in the road.

He’s become something of an expert at steering an obstacle course of bumpy streets in the south Cowichan community.

Cycling has cost him two replaced bike tires and four or five other flats. Then there’s the trip he took while jogging the uneven surfaces, and the $20,000 in damages to the family vehicle after unplowed snowy roads took the automobile for an unexpected spin.

“The plow won’t go over the hill in the snow,” Brunet, remembering the early 2009 heavy snowfall when plows avoided his neighbourhood for three weeks.

“We’re a secondary road, we accept that, but not getting cleared in three weeks is not fair,” Brunet said of his street, the pothole-ridden Norbury Road.

And to demonstrate the deplorable conditions of shoulders along the popular bike path, Brunet took the News Leader Pictorial for a drive around the Shawnigan Lake ring road.

“Drivers complain cyclists won’t get off the roads, but riding on the shoulder is totally dangerous,” he says while pointing to loose gravel, broken shoulders, huge potholes and deep cracks.

“Mostly, the problem is the inconsistency along the shoulder,” he added.

The Shawnigan resident is finally seeing some street results in recent weeks — after contacting every relevant government office, including Premier Gordon Campbell’s — but the concern is certainly not a new one. Brunet said this year marks the first time work has been done on the road since he moved in seven years ago.

“It’s an ongoing issue,” confirmed Ken Cossey, the Cowichan Valley Regional District’s Shawnigan Lake director, of the region’s roads.

“It’s been deteriorating, and I’d say it’s really come to a head in the last two to three years.”

Cossey and other CVRD officials are scheduling a meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Transportation as well as the region’s roadwork contractors, Mainroad South Island Contracting, to work toward a solution.

“Mainroad receives its funding from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, and we’ve been told they’re not getting enough,” Cossey added. “This isn’t an issue for just our area. Saltair, for example, is in a similar situation.”

Calls to Mainroad were not returned but Jeff Knight with the Ministry of Transportation said Mainroad’s 10-year contract — which started September 2004 — is for $10.3-million and is adjusted annually for inflation.

Knight added upcoming work in the Shawnigan area includes about one-kilometre of paving on Cobble Hill Road, plus pothole patching and shoulder work in the area.

Brunet also received some good news Friday from Mainroad and the ministry.

“They agreed to put a couple of boxes of sand out for residents in the wintertime for residents to use on the roads, to help us get up the hill, and they (Mainroad) will maintain those sandboxes,” said Brunet.

“They also said they’ll repave the whole section of road from the intersection (at the bottom of Norbury’s hill) to the top of the hill, because that whole section is rough and full of potholes.”

Still, Brunet wonders why it took years of complaints to get basic road maintenance in the heavily taxed lakefront neighbourhood.

“This is why the whole notion of contracting out public services is perhaps not so great an idea, because it puts the contractor in a position of having to pick up the slack the government normally would have to pick up on its own,” Brunet said of unanticipated costs caused by weather and other factors.

“I understand the problem, but for me, living on the road, I don’t care how the contract works — it’s not doing the job it’s supposed to do. The government has to rethink this model, because, however it’s working, it’s not working the way it should.”

Triathlon adds to concern

Shawnigan residents like Al Brunet and CVRD Director Ken Cossey have been pushing for a quick response to road concerns as an estimated 500 international cyclists are set to descend on Shawnigan next month.

The Subaru Western Triathlon Series happens May 30 and cyclists will need safe shoulders to do their peddling on.

“We’re trying to get some paving done now as we speak,” Cossey said. “This is an international event — we’ve got cyclists from Europe, from all over the world, converging on Shawnigan.”