Bennett bridge traffic congestion bad for business in Central Okanagan
A West Kelowna business owner is one of many frustrated by the increasing congestion on the Bennett Bridge and the highway leading to it.
“It’s a service industry so we go back and forth across the bridge between suppliers and customers,” Michelle Schiavon told iNFOnews.ca. “We just can’t physically get to everybody because of it and it’s just too expensive for us to have employees sitting on the bridge and waiting.”
She owns Triumph Heating and Air Conditioning and does what she can to schedule travel outside of peak rush hours but if a customer has a breakdown, her staff have to get on the road, often having to cross the bridge to buy parts for the repairs.
It means, especially on busy summer days, that travel time cuts down on the number of customers she can service.
READ MORE: How Westsiders are keeping Kelowna's Bennett bridge 'useable'
While traffic flow can be OK on the bridge, the lights along Highway 97 force traffic to grind to a halt on both sides of the bridge over Okanagan Lake.
Since posting to a Facebook group last month, Schiavon has been contacted by people having problems with their daycare because of the congestion and others who are concerned about delays if family members need emergency medical treatment.
She’s also well aware many other businesses are impacted by the traffic jams throughout the Highway 97 corridor.
“Coming from the Lower Mainland where we used to sit for two hours, it’s nowhere near that bad,” Schiavon said. “But it’s headed that way and it takes 10 to 15 years before anything gets done. If we wait until it gets that bad, it’s past the point of no return.”
Her original social media posting was to see if there were people interested in signing a petition to try to get government to speed up improvements to the road network.
She didn't go ahead with that after learning there was already a petition on Change.org that garnered 700 signatures in its first three days. That effort has now stalled at 2,177 signatures.
“I just don’t think people have seen it,” Schiavon said and encouraged people to sign it. “I think we’re definitely going to have to do something here to rally the troops.”
She’s quite busy with her business but has talked to some of the candidates in the municipal election and is encouraging others to form a committee to push for change.
The Change.org petition was created by Joseph Wadden who said the province needs at leads 10,000 signatures before it will move on the traffic problems.
The petition can be signed here.
READ MORE: Transit, not a second crossing, is the solution for Central Okanagan's bridge, highways: planners
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