ighway 17 off

September 22, 1989 News 985-2131 Classified 986-6222 Distribution 986-1337 92 pages 25¢

ramp site

aises safety concerns

THE REALIZATION that an off-ramp from the new $22
million Lonsdale and Upper Levels Highway interchange
will connect with a street that runs immediately adjacent to
a North Vancouver elementary school has raised the ire of
parents and school adminstration.

“There are already enough
problems there at 3 p.m. without a
freeway running through there,”
said area resident Judy Poole.
“It’s a safety concern right now.”’

The plans for the new  inter-
change designate Chesterfield
Avenue as a major south-side
highway access road midway be-
tween Lonsdale Avenue and
Westview Drive, replacing the cur-
rent access via Mahon Avenue.

But Chesterfield, which would
meet the highway just north of
24th Street, runs parallel to Lons-
dale along the western boundary of
Lonsdale Elementary Schoal at
22nd Street.

Lonsdale principal Cam Shields
said Wednesday he had no idza
Chesterfield would be a major
feeder road for the highway until
school parents brought it to his at-
tention earlier this month.

“It's a real safety concern,”' he
said, ‘‘because the school will have
two extremely busy roads —
Lonsdale and Chesterficld — on
either side of it.”

Shields said the school’s enrol-
ment, which is currently 330, is
growing rapidly and has doubled
in the past five years.

He estimated that 50 per cent of
Lonsdale’s pupils live on the west
side of Chesterfield and therefore
cross the street on their way to
school.

Bul Dave Cunliffe, regional
director for the highways
ministry’s souchcoast region, said
engineers do nol expect any
significant increase in traffic flow
along Chesterfield as a result: of
the new highway overpass.

The Chesterfield connection, he
said, is not really a highway off-
ramp, but more a distributor cor-
ridor to other area toads for traftic
leaving the Upper Levets.

While Mahon Avenue connected
with the highway prior to the in-
terchange construction, Cunliffe
said that street would provide in-
adequate deceleration time for
highway craffic under the new
design.

Chesterfield has been identified

by North Vancouver City as one of

its major arterial roads since the
early 1970s.

Traffic leaving the highway at
Mahon routinely travel) cast) on
23rd Street and down Chesterfield,
he said, ‘‘so we don't fect there
will be a significant change in traf-
fic flows on Chesterfield.””

Cunliffe said the traffic light at
23rd Street and Chesterfield pro-
vided a good, safe crossing for
Lonsdale Elementary School
pupils.

The road also has a marked
crosswalk at 22nd Street.

North Vancouver City engineer
Chuck Gale said traffic flows on
Chesterfield would be primarily
affected north of 23rd Street by
the off-ramp.

**We don’t expect that there will
be any significant effect south of
23rd,”’" he said, adding that the
Chesterfield off-ramp ‘ould be
largely for traffic leaving the
highway.

But Poole, the mother of a
Grade 2 student at Lonsdale, ques-
tioned the need for another high-
way access road between Westview
and Lonsdale.

She said people will continue
driving down Chesterfield after
leaving the highway rather than at-
tempting to drive down Lonsdale,
which has more traffic light con-
trols and is busier.

“We don't have a problem with
the freeway, even though bulldoz-
ers are in our back yard right
now,"’ Poole said, ‘‘because we
know that what we are going to
end up with will be much nicer
than what we have now, but we do
have a problem with the off-ramp
running down Chesterfield.”’

Poole said she and other ared
residents have attempted ta have
the Chesterfield connection por-
tion of the overpass design chang-
ed since she became aware of it at
a July 25 overpass open house held
by the highways ministry at the
Coach House Ina,

“Hut so far,’ she said, ‘tall we
have potis a bureaucratic
runaround,"

Cunliffe said it) was virtually
impessible to make any changes to
the overpass design at this point,

He said in addition to the July
25 open house, the interchange
design owas availible for public
siewing alan open house held as
far back as November 1985, and
that design) plans showing the
Chesterfield connection have been
on display at municipal halls and
libraries.

“So it’s aot as if we have sud-
denly sprung this on evervone,”” he
said.

prise stork cey

PROUD PARENTS. Ken and: Anne Smith of North Vancouver. go. fi big. urprise '