THE District of North Vancouver faces a difficult challenge on how best to control the growing sport of longboarding and the conflicting interests of residents, drivers and young enthusiasts.
Longboarding is a comparatively recent phenomenon and homeowners on the municipality's upper slopes are justifiably concerned about "their" roads becoming boarding racetracks with the potential for tragic accidents like the one that killed 27-year-old Glenna Evans in 2010. News that North Vancouver could become the Aspen of longboarding will be a shock to most homeowners who didn't plan on front-row seats to a race when they purchased their homes.
However, the district has worked hard to reach out to the boarding community via surveys in the last six months and deserves praise for not just exiling the sport from its streets like West Vancouver - a move that could see illegal boarders trying to flee, perhaps dangerously, from police.
What our local boarders need to do now is take Mayor Richard Walton's advice to heart and come up with a code of ethics voluntarily adhered to. Boarders who prove they can safely coexist with other traffic will go a long way towards keeping North Vancouver's streets open to all users.
What was disappointing in Monday night's workshop was the lack of participation by the city or West Vancouver. Was an invitation not extended? Was it ignored? Wouldn't a North Shore-wide approach to a phenomenon that is not going away provide better options than three wildly different municipal responses?
