Dear Editor:
Living in Summerland 65 years and driving Garnett Valley Road since the age of 16, I have seen little change in its route or its surface. At that time, say 1959 or earlier, there were 36 families living in the valley. During those days most houses usually had one family vehicle.
Since those times there are now 41 new homes Ten of the more recent homes have businesses. This would include wineries, large hay-producing fields, landscaping businesses, excavating businesses and bed and breakfast businesses, all of which create considerably more traffic. Combining these new additional homes and the fact that many now have two, possibly three, cars per household we have an increase in traffic of 400 per cent travelling up and down the same narrow twisty road. This does not even take into account the increased traffic with business vehicles visiting the valley for other purposes such as fuel trucks, etc.
In approximately 1959 the road was rerouted because of the creek and paved up to the then-superintendent of public works’ residence and no further. Years later a cheap way of dressing up the road was done by just oiling and grading the road into a supposedly harder surface. A year or so later a head-on collision not 300 yards further up the road involving a prominent municipal worker seriously injured two family members. Two vehicles have slid off the road during winter on an improper sloping section of the road which now collects vast runoff puddles forcing vehicles to creep along the wrong side of the road approaching a corner. Further up the road at the approximately two-mile mark from town, two vehicles have rolled off the road down a very steep hillside, one of these being a large motor home. Still further up the road at approximately 3.5 miles a serious head-on collision occurred at the crest of a rise in the road having poor visibility to oncoming traffic. Lastly a serious accident occurred recently with a recovery truck hauling a vehicle from another accident when it edged off the road, again on a narrow corner. When will the municipality take responsibility for this dangerous and hazardous road and quit putting Garnett Valley residents on the back burner?
Gordon K. Dunsdon
Summerland