“Road slippage” in the ferry lineup lane was among the concerns raised by Gabriolans who attended a June 18 Gabriola Transportation Association (GTA) meeting with highway officials.

The cracks along the ferry lineup lane on Taylor Bay Road are “getting much bigger and it looks like that slope is moving a tiny bit each year – maybe a couple of inches”, said one meeting attendee at the meeting at Agi Hall.

The surface of the line-up lane on Taylor Bay Road is “down four inches” from where it once was, according to GTA member Randy Young.  He thought the road was losing a quarter of an inch a year “conservatively”.  GTA member Andre Lemieux added that it is clear “the asphalt is actually cracking”.

Asked if any repaving is scheduled to take place on Gabriola, Operations Manager Johnathan Tillie of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MOTI) said that repaving is based on a ranked list of priorities for a large service area that includes Gabriola. He said the ranking depends on “a number of factors like traffic volume, safety, road usage that sort of thing”.

Tillie was also told about a report by the Gabriola Cycle Paths, which identified Taylor Bay Road and the ferry hill as being particularly high risk for cyclists. Trustee Sheila Malcolmson said that the Cycle Path’s report “was adopted into Gabriola’s Official Community Plan last summer”, and MOTI was provided with the text of the document in the fall. She said the expectation, as per the protocol between the Islands Trust and MOTI, is that MOTI will use the report to note what the priorities are when resurfacing the roads.

She said with the support of the Local Trust Committee, the Cycle Paths also asked for funding to make improvements to four particularly dangerous areas.  GTA Chair Jim Ramsay noted that one of the areas was identified as being a “three vultures” section of road. The Cycle Path report identifies three vultures as the most dangerous roadway possible.