A new emergency exit is coming to a neighbourhood in Upper Tantallon, where a devastating wildfire broke out in 2023.
The exit will be about 500 metres long and will connect the south-western part of Westwood Hills to Highway 103.
All councillors voted in favour of the exit on Tuesday, and according to a staff report, the city will start acquiring the necessary land and planning development. They aim to have the exit open in 2026.
When the wildfire broke out on May 28, 2023, there was only two exits from the neighbourhood, both at the southern end and both close to each other, which seriously slowed down traffic as the fires closed in and people tried to evacuate.
City council has hit several snags to get the exit routes built.
In May, 2024, Pam Lovelace, who was then the councillor for Hammonds Plains and St. Margaret’s, said the exits should have been built already, but the city cannot just take land from private property owners.
She said the city needed multiple property owners to be on board, and if one steps out, then they have to reconfigure the route.
The new exit will connect Westwood to the highway, but it does not do much to serve the northern part of the neighbourhood, according to Mike Connors, the manager of transportation for the city.
“It doesn’t really benefit the back end of the community as much as we want to see. So there’s still portions of the northern part of the of the community that would benefit from from a community connector road,” Connors told the city council.
The city will explore whether or not a connector road would be a good option. It would tie the northern part of the neighbourhood to either Highland Park or Upper Hammonds Plains.
Many have suggested using an old logging road to connect to the highway, but Connors said it’s a heavily wooded area. During a wildfire, it could potentially be dangerous to travel through there, so that “was not something that we wanted to recommend,” he said.
