A year later, and the intersection at Church and Throup Road has yet to see any pedestrian improvements.
Sooke Mayor Maja Tait said she is extremely dissatisfied with the lack of work being done, as there are many problem areas around town affecting the safety of pedestrians.
Last year, the project was unable to be completed due to uncooperative weather, and the same was true for this spring. However, Tait said she is unsure of what the hold up is now.
“Our staff is trying to pin down the contractor to complete the work,” said Tait. “All over the place people are behind schedule on so many different things because of the demand on trades, so we are doing our best to get it completed.”
She explained that it’s important to at least get lines painted because careless motorists might not pay attention to where the road is and swerve over into the pedestrian’s access point.
“I’m annoyed that it’s not finished, and that we’ve been put off this year continuously. It should have been done a long time ago as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “It’s frustrating for me that this is the level of service that Sooke is getting when there’s a demand for improvements in many areas.”
Teresa Sullivan, chief administrative officer at the District of Sooke, said that along with the walkable paved shoulder improvements on Grant Road and Golledge, the District is working on getting the lines at Church and Throup painted.
“We had an issue with our line painting contractor in that they have been repeatedly delayed over a span of months, so the District of Sooke has a new contractor to compete the works,” said Sullivan.
She added that they will be installing tuff post standing delineators along the lines once they are painted.
“The tuff post delineators have just arrived within the past couple days, and a request for quote to have a contractor install them will likely go out,” she said.
“These require the painting to be complete because they sit directly on the fog line, so we’re looking at late September or early October as a final completion date for everything, so long as things go relatively smoothly from this point onward.”
