Dear Editor:
The proposed Mountain Highway interchange is inadequate - let's do it right the first time; don't waste my tax dollars.
If the priority is to alleviate traffic in this area by separating local east/west traffic from north/south commuting traffic, then we have missed the mark on the conceptual design for the new interchange. The design still forces southbound Mountain Highway traffic through the Seylynn neighbourhood. They gave southbound traffic coming from the west down Keith Road access to Highway 1 but neglected all of those coming down Mountain Highway. The engineers on the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing got it right with a design that incorporated three lanes in each direction, considering future growth. The bottlenecks are the interchanges north of the Second Narrows bridge and the big orange bridge crossing Lynn River at the bottom of the Cut.
The previous engineers designing the interchanges to the west at Westview, Lonsdale and Lynn Valley exits understood the need to get the highway traffic onto the highway quickly and effectively, not through the neighbourhoods of Seylynn or via Brooksbank.
With the future expansion in the Seylynn corridor between Keith and Main, this design indicates short-sighted planning, which will eventually lead to us to rebuilding the south side of the new overpass design to alleviate this congestion. Let's save the tax dollars and do it right now rather than wasting future spending to get it right. Did we not learn from previous designs the benefits of such traffic flow planning?
Keep it simple, copy the Lonsdale interchange design. It's not that tough.
Jeff Wylie, engineer
North Vancouver
