Letter – Keeping our streets safe

This email is long overdue, and for some of you will be the first one you receive regarding our community wish for respectful traffic flow through our James Bay Community streets. To others, thank you for providing your emails for this specific connection and purpose. There is a hope for creating solutions and peace with the traffic that moves through our streets when the cruise ships are in port.

Last year, we met (thanks to Cole and Deanne for setting that up) as a group to share our thoughts with each other and with the taxi drivers who constantly sped through our streets. We also acknowledged and thanked the taxi companies whose drivers respect the speed limits in our streets.

I had some email contact with James Bay Neighbourhood Association (JBNA) and the James Bay Beacon last year and there was a suggestion from JBNA for residents to phone the police. Insist on a file number and provide the name of the cab company and the number of the cab.

As this new season of cruise ship visits begins, my hope is that we can be proactive in our desire to keep our streets safe and minimize speeding and unsafe driving. There have been accidents and the deaths of several animals.
Ideas include:

• petitioning the city to put in some more four way stops, and/or several speed humps on Montreal and Oswego streets.
• requesting more speed traps from our local police. We have rarely ever seen police in this neighbourhood catching speeders.
• building relationships with Vancouver Island Harbour Authority and the taxi companies so we can all be on the same page.
• holding regular protests to show the drivers and their passengers how strongly we feel about needing safe streets.
• create a letter writing campaign to share the impact of speeding on our com- munity.

My hope is that we can find some resolve that works for the residents, hu- mans and animals, and the taxi companies.

Would we like to have a community picnic at the small, contained kids' park on Montreal across from the tennis courts so we can gather our thoughts and cre- ate an action plan as we stand in solidarity towards a safe neighbourhood during the busy nights when cruise ships are in town? If so, when?

I look forward to the dialogue and creating some action!

In peace,

Mitchel, James Bay resident