WEST END VOICES
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YOU HAD YOUR SAY TOO!
This month we share some of the comments we received in response to two columns on controversial topics in The West End Journal. Keep the conversations going!
DOGS ON SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS
Lucy Maloney’s “West End Voices” observations about the carelessness of dog owners letting their pets frolic on school playgrounds elicited these comments:
Chrissy: I am told dog owners want dog run areas without the gravel that injures doggy paws. Those spots on Georgia are great but cause injury.
Wender: Thanks Lucy for this! Those obnoxious dog people…. This has been going on and on…. the dog people don’t care. All they care about is themselves and themselves alone. They don’t even notice their dog having a dump as they are usually looking at their phone. This has been at least a ten-year issue. Waaaay back the VSB hired security to keep the dog people OFF the field, even on weekends! The dog people can be very threatening and they don’t care about kids wiping out in their dogs’ poo. Lazy, obnoxious, rude. It is so painfully gross. Like the dog people have more parks for their furbabies than human children in the WE. Pathetic.
Ingrid Shimizu: With more buildings allowing dogs and maybe one in three households have one, the problem will only increase. The schoolgrounds and beach have to be for the children. People in urban areas should not have a dog. Especially not a big dog.
Dogs need to run free. Are territorial and are unhappy in the West End. My son fell in a big pile of dogpoop on the side of a log years ago, it’s disgusting. Seen very loose poop that owners couldn't scoop and was easily slipped in! Move to the country if you want to have a dog. And morons that have 2-3. And not rescued from SPCA. Tax dog-owners much more. Lots of other issues like the ones that scoop and put their little bags everywhere. To get carried to garbage by someone else?! Our landfills are full of poop bags. Don’t get a dog that has to sit alone all day in an apartment and need care just like a child. And have nowhere to run
Love dogs, don’t get one!
Ellie: There are three off-leash dog runs on Georgia between Bidwell and Cardero. Walk your dog a couple extra blocks. These runs are often empty.
THE STANLEY PARK BIKE LANE CONTROVERSY
Nate Lewis’ Stanley Park Notebook coverage of the Stanley Park bike lane story generated a lot of very firm opinions.
leslie reed: I would like things to go back to pre-Covid. For decades I regularly biked the road, walked the seawall (and paths) and even drove to the Aquarium with visiting family.
1) Parents with small kid, plus dog, plus stroller, plus lunch, plus diapers and toys ... will always drive to SP, and should be made welcome. The pre-Covid arrangement seemed just fine to me.
2) Families, and the mobility challenged, and 99 percent of tourists will not want to bike the SP road ... because of the hill. They should be made welcome on the seawall, but discouraged from clogging up the road. This was the usage pre-Covid and nobody complained.
3) There is a need to get from Second Beach to Third Beach, without having to spend an hour going all around the park just to end up half a mile from where you started. This was a problem pre-Covid as well. I think most bikers used the pedestrian sidewalk, slowly, and yielding to the very, very few pedestrians. Signs directing bikes into the 2nd Beach parking lot at the start would help. Signs too on the sidewalk saying 'SHARE' would help.
4) Bike traffic on the road multiplied THREE or FOUR TIMES with Covid. Where did they come from, and why? Most of the increase are very fit, going very fast, aggressively ... and think they own the road (over cars and slower bikes)! This is where the problem lies. How can we put genie back in the bottle and get them back into their spin classes? There is no room to include the velodrome they have created. The only way would be to get rid of the bike lane completely. Again, I am concluding that pre-Covid was better.
5) The Horsedrawn carriage simply DOES NOT WORK with a separate bike lane. Some of their necessary manoeuvres are just asking for a major injury. Again, the pre-Covid set up required bikes to slow and time their passing, but so what? We were biking for fun, not racing.
Jackie Bohez: Here's the link to the chart showing each candidate's position publicly supporting the separate bike lane in Stanley Park. https://bikehub.ca/municipal-elections/vancouver
Wendy Bradley: ABC is showing arrogant disregard for the tremendous amount of work the previous Parks Board staff and engineers along with the public, have put into figuring out how to make Stanley Park work for ALL OF US. Yes, all of us. ( FYI, I am disabled and ride a trike in the park. I also drive my car around it.) The work the previous Parks Board had accomplished was a careful human-centred change initiative, designed for public input, testing, and iteration. ABC Parks Board Members still have a chance to VOTE TO WAIT to tear the bike lane out until they have a PLAN to show us as to how and why they will improve what is there presently. Until then, over the winter, there's plenty of room for everyone to park and bike. We're watching. Do we have a dictator at the helm? Or can the new PB members vote their conscious and show some respect for the hard work and public input that has come before?
Completely absent in the article or in the stated considerations of anyone quoted is the fact that mobility-challenged people are not permitted to use Second Beach pool. Yes, I did say that. Because it’s true. If you are mobility-challenged you have limited options. Someone can drive you and drop you off. Summer gridlock in the park in can be an hour or far worse, so that’s not going to happen. You can drive yourself (same problem) and after your snail-like marathon all the way around the park, you have one pass to find a spot in the extremely limited parking lot before the road forces you back to Georgia. No spot? That’s an hour or two of your life you are not going to get back. No swim for you. No access via Beach Avenue? Too bad. Why don’t you just walk from the Tennis Courts? Right, that pesky disability problem again. No functioning public transit? Well, that affects everybody, but able-bodied people have options. Mobility-challenged people have fewer options. Well, really, no options here. So let’s just say it right out loud: We don’t give a shit that handicapped people can’t use the pool, or all of Second Beach for that matter. Where the hell are the disability advocates on this one? Where the hell are all of us? Say it: the pool is not for handicapped people and nobody cares one whit. Except the people excluded from being there.
