As published in The Guardian September 17, 2011

Editor:

The proposed bypass surgery proposed for the Strathgartney Provincial Park seems ill-advised.

If the vertical distance to be saved is only 15 metres, as Dr. Doug Sobey has said in his commentary (‘Stop this ridiculous idea’, The Guardian, Sept. 16, 2011), the millions of taxpayer dollars to build the road will take millions of trucks saving fuel on the new road to pay it out. Nothing against the transportation industry, but its small savings per load would not bring down prices on the transported items.

As Dr. Sobey says, one of the wonderful views from our Island highways would have a surgical scar in it. The view from the new road would be nice, but smaller, and not at all deserving of a pull off.

The beeches that may be removed for this road are the survivors of the beech canker. Don’t destroy them. Gather their seedlings and start new beech forests, spreading their good DNA. Use the new beech forests as a carbon offset, if you happen to believe that carbon offsets actually work.

If there are grants for highway bypass surgery, please finish the long-promised Cornwall bypass. It will ease an increasingly congested area, and could save even more truck fuel by not having to come to a complete stop at one or the other (or both) traffic signals in Cornwall and the signal in North River.

Don’t put a scar across Strathgartney.

Carl Mathis,

Charlottetown