BY NORMAN HOTSON

Your article on Infrastructure (“LCC targets six of Ganges’ worst intersections”) outlines several options for improving pedestrian safety in Ganges. 

The question of comfort and safety is of utmost concern in a bustling “downtown” environment. Roundabouts were apparently recommended for two intersections to calm speeding traffic and prioritize pedestrian safety.  

These engineered solutions do have their place but not in a busy, urban precinct.  

Roundabouts require a large, flat land area to accommodate the turning radii of large vehicles. They are not conducive to a hilly condition like the intersection of Upper and Lower Ganges Roads. They are also one of the worst designs for pedestrian priority and comfort due to the continuously moving traffic and the long distance to walk across the full intersection. 

At the Centennial Park location, a far better solution would be to turn Lower Ganges Road into a right-angled “T” intersection with the Fulford-Ganges Road. This approach would simplify the current confusion of pedestrian crossing points, shorten walking distances and allow for better access to both sides of Fulford Ganges Road.

The functioning and character of a “village” benefits from having a long-term vision in place. Ganges should be the subject of a comprehensive urban design study involving planning, landscape, transportation and engineering inputs. This team could develop a strategy for streets and open spaces in the village with specific ideas for urban design, including street geometry and widths (most of Ganges’ streets are too wide), crosswalk locations, increased curbside parking, street tree and planting areas, lighting and signage concepts.  

A phased implementation of changes to improve the village environment can then take place over time, potentially funded through government programs.  

Let’s not jump into thinking this is simply a crosswalk problem.

The author is an urbanist and retired AIBC architect in Vancouver.

If you are a gardener, or contemplating becoming one, you should be forewarned about one of the most dangerous hazards that awaits you the moment you dare set foot in your little garden plot. This predator lies coiled and camouflaged in the foliage and is ready to spring out and strike when you least expect it.

You might guess incorrectly by assuming this threat is a poisonous snake such as a cobra or a rattler whose deadly venom would put you in the throes of agony before your lifeless body converted to a heap of compost and mulch. Then again, perhaps you may mistake this creature for a bone crunching python or boa constrictor lurking in the vegetation and ready to coil itself around your unsuspecting torso before squeezing you into a manageable nice light snack.

Your guess at the species of predator that is stalking you is actually not that far off. It may not be a cold-blooded soulless reptile but could easily appear as one in your overly fertile imagination. What you had projected as a murderous serpent is none other than the common garden hose.

Okay. Perhaps a little exaggeration is at play here. Everybody knows that garden hoses are inanimate tools invented by humankind to transport water from one place to another. If you believe that, you are dead wrong. In reality, they have minds of their own and their sole purpose on this earth is to frustrate the hell out of gardeners.

When you bring a new hose home from the hardware store, it is usually attractively packaged and held together in tight coils by plastic zip ties which can be easily snipped without much shedding of your blood. 

When you unwrap the packaging, you realize that the coils present a problem because you want a long flat line that maximizes the full length of the hose. The accepted method to get rid of the circular coils is to allow the hot sun to get at the hose and gradually force it to let go of its spiral shape and lie flat along the ground. Unfortunately, this will never happen because as soon as you expose the hose to the hot sun, the sun will mysteriously disappear for six weeks and be replaced by incessant rain (which will negate the reason you bought the hose in the first place).

Even if the sun does shine, most gardeners are too impatient to allow their hoses to flatten properly. There’s good reason why gardeners are referred to as “hosers.” It’s only a matter of time before the nefarious hose, bent on evil intent, transforms itself into a rubber leg-hold trap which catches the gardener in its clutches and brings him down. The more the gardener struggles, the more wrapped up and tangled he gets. This usually occurs when said gardener is in the process of pushing a wheelbarrow overloaded with a giant heap of manure and compost. Inevitably, the gardener will land at the very bottom while the wheelbarrow’s steaming load will act as a proper topping.

Moving hoses from one area of the garden to another can often make for a dangerous and complex manoeuvre. While you are dragging one end of the hose over to the tomato plant bed, you may not realize that most of the other end of the hose has decided to take a short cut through your bean patch, thusly wiping out weeks of dedicated care and labour. As a result, you may find that the water sprinkling down on each tomato seedling has a definite salty taste because it has fallen directly as tears from your eyes.

Then there’s the matter of connecting hoses together or pulling them apart. The slow, old-fashioned method involves screwing the male end of one hose into the female end of another. If you don’t know which is which, nobody has to know, but make sure you don’t cross-thread the ends while trying to screw them together. You will wind up stripping the thread so that the two ends will never be able to couple properly. Not only will you get soaked by the resulting spray, but you will probably ruin both hoses.

Another important detail when connecting hoses to just about anything is making sure you place a rubber washer between the hose and whatever other device you are attaching to it. 

It doesn’t matter whether it’s another hose, a water faucet, a timer, a sprinkler, a drip hose, a water valve, a wand, or an entire irrigation system, the result of not using this ridiculously cheap but absolutely essential gizmo will result in you getting more soaked than any part of your garden.

Hoses have this bad habit of getting tangled up with each other. The cheaper ones tend to kink and bend over one another. The kink eventually causes a split in the hose which causes a hundred foot geyser, like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, to shoot up into the air. It will be only a matter of minutes before your well or water reservoir will have run dry.

Instead of screwing together the ends of hoses and other watering devices, another way to go is by using quick-click and release connectors such as the ones marketed by Gardena and Temu. The beauty of these connectors is that it makes changing from one watering tool to another just a simple click away. What could be better?

Well, what could be better is if these devices didn’t cost an arm and a leg for each connector (and you will probably need a couple of handfuls to attach to all your watering thingamabobs), or if they didn’t crack or break as readily, or if they didn’t leak as easily even if you remembered to use rubber washers.

Nobody asked me, but if you go down to the woods today you’re in for a big surprise. 

If, however, you amble down to your garden at any time, don’t be shocked if you find a predatory green garden hose lurking in the shrubbery. The hose is the hunter and you are the prey. If you are not exceedingly careful, it might be a case of the hoser getting hosed. Remember, I never promised you a hose garden.

Salt Spring Islanders have a storied tradition of rolling up our collective sleeves to tackle problems left too long unsolved. 

Increasingly, as we’ve seen with the proliferation of employer-operated housing, those ad hoc solutions are created now by businesses. To solve parking scarcity during the high demand Saturday Market period, a new lot on Ganges Hill has been launched with a novel approach: framing a partnership between island businesses and local nonprofits, with support from the Chamber of Commerce. And always eager for fundraising opportunities, we have little doubt the response to a call for groups willing to staff the lot in exchange for half the $10-per-car fee was robust. Back-of-the-napkin math would easily put the take in the high hundreds, which is not bad for a day’s volunteering.

At the May 16 Saturday Market, early reviews were good. Holding some cars up the hill thinned out Ganges traffic noticeably, if not transformatively.

That the new lot on Fulford-Ganges Road might also relieve parking pressure at Country Grocer/Ganges Village Marketplace was not lost upon islanders, who tend to hold forth on summer traffic at both places with a Yogi Berra level of zen: “no one shops on weekends, it’s too crowded.” The beauty of the “market parking” sign was that it could be read to cover either, and property owner Leigh Large himself was spotted driving at least the inaugural shuttle run down the hill in the placarded six-seater golf cart. 

The abrupt long-weekend launch of the lot left no time to investigate, but while it seems unlikely the property is zoned to permit off-site parking, it seems even less likely our Local Trust Committee — at least those members who still show up to the meetings — would enforce against a collaboration featuring struggling charities and Salt Spring’s largest private employer. 

Our trustees have spoken as a single voice — lately, almost literally — in refusing to let perfect be the enemy of good. And we’ve certainly chided them before for selectively enforcing their own bylaws, rather than tackling the substantive work addressing the land use authority’s role in whatever problem needs fixing.

But however one feels about shortcuts, by definition they get somewhere faster. We hope both our vendors and island nonprofits absolutely rake in the cash this summer.