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LETTER: Parking needs to be preserved on 29th Street

Dear Editor: I would like to add to and hopefully clarify some of the issues referred to in your July 17 story regarding East 29th St parking.
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Dear Editor:

I would like to add to and hopefully clarify some of the issues referred to in your July 17 story regarding East 29th St parking.

The outcry from residents is due to what is seen as the secretive and arrogant manner in which mayor and council of DNV have handled the matter. The “extensive public consultation” touted by the politicians has actually been nearly nonexistent and completely faceless to the residents involved. The real facts are that for many of the residents living on East 29th Street, the first notice on this issue was a mailer sent in early June from the district informing them, among other changes, that street parking was being eliminated between Fromme Road and Tempe Glen/Royal Avenue, and in its place bike lanes on both sides of the street were being installed. 

These changes were approved by DNV mayor and council in a May 27, 2019 meeting and a week or two later residents were informed by mailer that road construction would begin in June and be completed by fall of this year. 

There had been just one “public consultation” that happened in March 2018 when at an open house at Boundary Elementary, engineering and transportation staff from both the CNV and DNV made presentations of proposed changes to East 29th and sought the public’s input regarding them both at that meeting and online throughout the remainder of that month. None of the proposals presented included the complete removal of street parking or the addition of bike lanes on both sides of the street. The proposed final recommendations for 29th Street, which were ultimately suggested to mayor and council in an earlier May 2019 meeting, were very similar to, and reflected a final refinement of, the same proposals that were presented to the public at the Boundary Elementary meeting and showed bike lanes on one side of the street only and parking on the other. These recommendations made by their own transportation and engineering professionals were rejected by council who told the staff to go back and revise the plans to better accommodate bicyclists.

The involved residents are firstly outraged by the lack of due process. Certainly being spoken to belittlingly by the mayor in public comments, while he and most councillors remain essentially cloaked and are choosing not to return phone calls, is not what anyone expects or hopes from their elected representatives, nor can it have a problem-solving effect. Being invited to a public meeting July 22 intended to reflect the councils’ outreach but at which only “safety issues” (as they define them) will be entertained for discussion smacks of both propaganda and classic big-city-knows-best politics of the worst kind.    

The consequences of these changes (either intended or unintended) could not possibly have been properly assessed; there simply has not been time. Presentations by staff to mayor and council began in April, final presentations were made in mid-May (and were summarily rejected), then new entirely scope-changing proposals were made and approved in a single meeting at the end of May. Residents were informed by mail and construction began, both in June. One has to question the haste and motivation of the decision-making process. The vehicles that currently use East 29th for street parking do so because there is the need and not because the vehicles are being “stored,” and also because there is no current alternative; additionally residents (tax paying property owners) have been doing so with the tacit approval of CNV and DNV since time immemorial. Where are the cars to go? Adjacent neighbourhoods stand guard; your streets are the alternative.  

Brad Alden
North Vancouver

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