The fight against Kelowna’s plan to spend $135M on two kilometres of road

Buried in a city plan, that isn’t exactly leisurely reading, is a plan for a two kilometre stretch of road in Kelowna with a price tag of $135 million.

The Clement Avenue Extension from Spall Road to Highway 33 is still in the planning phase, but a group of local residents argue that this is the time to mount an opposition to wasteful spending that would destroy green space along the Okanagan Rail Trail bike path in the city.

Save the Rail Trail Green Space Association is trying to prevent the Clement Avenue Extension and its president Rebecca Tyson said saving the green space along the trail is important, and so is properly allocating $135 million. The association has a petition with roughly 1,200 signatures so far in an effort to try to stop the project.

“If you sit down and do the math… this two kilometre segment of road will only save drivers 20 to 90 seconds,” she told iNFOnews.ca. “So little time that it won’t even be noticeable, and we lose all the green space.”

Clement Avenue would run parallel to Enterprise Way, right next to the rail trail, and the preliminary design is set to be finished this year.

Tyson is a professor at the UBC Okanagan campus and she regularly uses the rail trail to get to work.

“There are lots of cyclists commuting there, but then there are families out there and other people recreating, dog walkers and hikers, so it’s a very special place… because of the green space,” she said.

While roads are crucial, the idea that simply building more roads will reduce congestion is flawed thinking, she said, adding research has shown that when a road gets built or improved, more people use it and the traffic demand increases faster than space, money and time allow for more roads to be built.

“Roads are like free cookies. So if I go to a meeting and I bring a tray full of free cookies, they’ll all go,” Tyson said. “So next time I bring twice as many cookies. A bunch of people figured out that Rebecca showed up with free cookies… so the demand keeps going up. They’ve told their friends that you should come to this meeting because Rebecca shows up with free cookies. So I can’t keep up with the roads.”

Tyson said making everyone get on a bike isn’t reasonable nor feasible, giving people an opportunity to commute safely on a bike would reduce congestion more than another two kilometres on Clement Avenue.

“It’s going to make so little difference, and cost so much money. There are much better things we could do with that money,” she said.

Click here for the Save the Rail Trail Green Space Association’s website and petition.