Sunday, March 20, 2011

Traffic restrictions are different on either side of City Boarders

There are roads which go between municipalities, in case you did not notice. It recently became apparent that the rules of the roads will change once a vehicle hits one of the many invisible barriers.

In the case of one road between Central Saanich and Saanich, trucks over 5500 kilograms can drive up to the boarder in Central Saanich, but cannot drive along the same road once it reaches Saanich.

Due to a problem for the use of some land in Central Saanich, the counsel there agreed that it was appropriate to make some changes to the road which approaches the land, currently owned by the Rendle family. However, to access the road which Central Saanich is changing, one has to drive on Saanich Roads. Saanich counsel of course has neither interest nor incentive to do anything.

Why should Saanich care? It will cost money to make any changes and simply benefit a neighboring municipality.

Saanich did care enough to pay for new signs to be posted, making it clear that it was illegal for large trucks to use their roads.

This is not the way to manage a city and its roads. The capital needs to amalgamate.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You sure come up with some crazy examples of the benefits of "amalgamation" Saanich put those signs up at the request of Central Saanich and residents of both jurisdictions. The truck bylaw has been in place for over 20 years and the compost facility is flagrantly ignoring it. Do you really think our agricultural land would be better managed by a Council in downtown Victoria than they are now??!!

James Legh said...

Thank you for your comment. It is a perfect example of how people do not understand the benefit of Amalgamation. The issue is NOT this particular compost facility. The issue is the fact that if there was one city and one entity controlling the roads, then one would assume that if the facility should not be there, it would not be approved. The issue is NOT that Saanich should change its by-law. The issue is that there should only be one rule for the whole road. I do not care which it is, I just want there to be good government which will make decisions that are logical and consider what is going on outside of their current boarders.
Do I think agricultural land would be well managed by one Council? Yes. That is because there is value to us all to have agricultural land. The best example might be recreational land. (Think of Bear Mountain). The people in the city want recreational and agricultural land nearby. They are more likely going to preserve the land for those purposes than a small population in say the high lands who might be motivated to increase their tax base through development.
To assume that because the current City of Victoria has no agricultural land, that the people there (who only make up a small portion of the population) would be unable to have useful input into agricultural land, if frankly, nonsense.
Thank you again for leaving the comment, and I hope this helped clarify my objective in raising the point I did. James A. S. Legh

Anonymous said...

It helps clarify your thoughts but still does not make sense. Why do you have this naive notion that somehow a much bigger bureaucracy is better than small ones? There are many examples that would tell us that is not the case. There are also many examples of failed amalgamations in our country.There is no doubt that things could be done better in Greater Victoria but I personally think that a "mega" government is a huge step backwards.
Incidentally, you should check your facts on the truck bylaw, composting facility as you are making a couple of assumptions that are just not true.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the facts, I have just taken them from the paper, so I certainly do not warrant their accuracy. However I suspect the premise is accurate.
I see where we differ in opinion, and that fundamentally is the idea that amalgamating Greater Victoria into one (or three) cities would create a “mega” government. I do not believe the result would be anything more than a reasonably sized city. Mega implies too big and that would not be the case at all. In the greater scheme of cities we would still be small.
The key, for me and many others, is that we have all these small cities bordering each other, all of which should be integrated in every sense but are not. I live in Saanich, work in Victoria and own a business in Esquimalt. I hike in the highlands, fly out of North Saanich and work with Scouting in Sooke. We all use this whole region and it only makes sense that it be governed in a logical and united way.

Anonymous said...

What it comes down to for me is that I am not at all sure that amalgamation will improve anything, especially for the smaller jurisdictions. Many people seem to think that simply amalgamating will solve policing and transportation issues. I think there will be a whole host of new issues and we see this in larger cities all the time.
Greater Victoria is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live in North America-----we must be doing something right.
On average the property tax rates in the CRD are also far lower than larger urban areas, another sign we must be doing something right.

What I would like to see is more balanced coverage about the pros and cons----surely even you can not think it will all be positive?

Dave Killion said...

[What the pro-amalgamation bunch overlooks here is very much what they always overlook - the problem exists not just because the road runs through more than one municipality, but also because the municipalities own the road! ]

http://www.libertarianbookclub.com/2011/04/18/on-the-wrong-road/

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It helps clarify your thoughts but still does not make sense. Why do you have this naive notion that somehow a much bigger bureaucracy is better than small ones? There are many examples that would tell us that is not the case.