By John Francis
As the numbers of tourists have steadily increased on our peninsula, some areas have been more heavily affected than others. Over the last ten years or so, the number of visitors has regularly exceeded our capacity.
Moore Street in Lion’s Head was an early casualty, with people parking to walk the Lion’s Head Lookout trail.
Our municipality addressed that problem by banning on-street parking, putting in a reservation system at the McCurdy Street parking lot and building some sidewalks on the section of street that gets the heaviest pedestrian traffic.
Similar problems happened at Little Cove Road, Grant Watson Drive and Singing Sands. Similar solutions — eliminating on-street parking — fixed the problems in all three cases.
Little Cove Road still needed pavement, of course. It got that pavement last week. I would have taken a picture but it’s tar & chip so it still looks like a gravel road.
Earl Street and Harpur Drive were a different kind of problem. The village needs people to be able to park on Harpur Drive, and it’s the only way out of the village so there is no way to limit traffic. And all the people who parked on Harpur Drive immediately became pedestrians, so that, too needed to be fixed.
The solution was obvious: pave a third lane for parking, then put in a curb and a proper sidewalk. The only problem here was the cost of doing this (breathtaking). But Council voted to fix it and the job is now complete (see photo page 6).
I’m not sure whose budget will get dinged for these jobs, but I strongly suggest they should be paid for out of Paid Parking revenue and Municipal Accommodation Tax revenue.
These projects are only needed because of the increased traffic that tourism brings, so let’s use tourism revenue to pay for them.
