Posted Jun 19, 2009, 8:43 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Vancouver B.C.
Posts: 2,220
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Exit Strategy
Quote:
Businesses: fix this 'tunnel'
Merchants say off-ramp desperately needed - "hundreds of thousands of dollars in wallets are driving by every day."
Tom Zytaruk, Surrey Now
Published: Thursday, June 18, 2009
SURREY - Merchants in South Surrey and White Rock have protested a lack of access to U.S. tourists' dollars ever since the Pacific Highway was paved in 1923.
"There is no sign of any account along the Pacific Highway to indicate at what point the visitor is to turn to get into White Rock," a Surrey Gazette editorial lamented on May 8, 1924. Eighty-five years later, it's not so much the Pacific Highway that's the hassle, but Highway 99.
Continuing northward from the I-5, the highway has only two off-ramps into the White Rock-South Surrey area, at 8th Avenue, and King George Highway. The considerable stretch in between serves more like a concrete moat that separates the Peninsula from the rest of Surrey. From the highway, tourists heading north can see stores and restaurants they'd no doubt like to visit, but they just can't get to them. And by the time they reach the King George off ramp, they'd just as soon head into North Surrey or continue on into Vancouver.
"It's like a tunnel all the way to Vancouver," laments Jay Fettinger, president of the WRSS Chamber. Ultimately, South Surrey and White Rock merchants have had it with being cut off from U.S. business. So, the White Rock & South Surrey Chamber of Commerce, Surrey Board of Trade, White Rock Business Improvement Association, Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce and Cloverdale Business Improvement Association have joined their considerable forces to lobby the provincial Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to build a northbound off-ramp at 24th Avenue.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts has added her voice to the cause and says city hall is calling on new transportation minister Shirley Bond to build the ramp.
"We're building that shopping district up...we've been pushing for that (ramp) for a number of years," Watts said. "We'll continue to work with the ministry." Interestingly, Health Minister Kevin Falcon, who used to be B.C.'s minister of transportation, indicated that under his watch the ministry was never approached by the city with an offer to move forward with a ramp, and, "as such, it never really got anywhere."
Fettinger noted that in Washington State the I-5 has off-ramps galore, leading motorists to gas stations and fast food joints. But up here, if travellers heading north miss the 8th Avenue exit, "there's no way to get off the highway. You're basically clearing the whole entire area."
That includes more than gas stations - we're talking entire shopping districts. Fettinger observed that while an off-ramp at 24th Avenue would cost about $6 million to build, to do nothing would be considerably more costly to the B.C. economy simply because the U.S. tourists can't get to the many stores in the south.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars in wallets are driving by every day." He noted that the government has pumped all kinds of money into refurbishing the Peace Arch border crossing in anticipation of the winter Olympics next year. It would be a crying shame, say those calling for the ramp, if the Peninsula remained cut off during the Olympics.
"We want to get this thing going - we want it going now," Fettinger said. Local chambers of commerce and boards of trade have been sending letters to the ministry of transportation's regional manager, John Schnablegger, to that end.
Schnablegger told the Now on Thursday that the ministry of transportation is willing to partner with the City of Surrey and TransLink to see an off-ramp built at 24th Avenue.
"We have no problem with off-ramps," he said. But one won't be built in time for the Olympics, he added. The ministry's funding is "totally committed" up until 2013.
© Surrey Now 2009
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http://www2.canada.com/surreynow/news/story.html?id=1e0edb0a-3184-4fa0-98ab-d589d449886f
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