To the editor:
I cannot believe that authorities are actually thinking about building a second bridge over Okanagan Lake from the Westside to Kelowna. This idea is totally ridiculous and absurd.
What Kelowna, and every other town, needs is a bypass freeway. Major highways or freeways should never directly enter a town and be funnelled through a few dozen streetlights which are never in sequence but always a stop and go costing time and money, fuel, nerves and pollute the valley.
A Highway 97C turn off is required from the Pennask Summit, which is relatively flat high terrain, directly towards the northern end of Okanagan Lake bypassing Vernon and running north towards Revelstoke as an uninterrupted freeway with turn off ramps for Vernon, Armstrong, Enderby and so on. More than 30 to 40 per cent of all traffic would be avoided using the normal road as it is now.
Also a bypass from Winfield to Penticton running around the area of Joe Rich then connecting to the old Railway Tracks south of the renovated bridges would be in order to get an additional 30 to 40 per cent traffic off congested Hwy. 97.
A second bridge would cost just as much as these two bypasses and do nothing to relieve the stench of bad air in our valley and still need to be funnelled through endless traffic control lights.
Please people, use your common sense. In 1930 a well known dictator built a freeway called the autobahn network throughout Germany, bypassing every town, which by now has been copied in every European country even in the Third World. Do not tell me that the richest country in the world cannot afford a proper road system.
Joe Mattiasch, Kelowna