Where’s my Mail?

Dear Mayor and Council.

I wanted to take a moment to inform you of recent events regarding mail delivery in our neighbourhood. For reasons unknown to us, our street – the 1000 block of Gatensbury Rd – has recently been deemed “a danger to deliver mail” zone. We received no advance warning, not even a note from Canada Post telling us about this decision and why it was made. We just noticed that our mail hadn’t been delivered for over a week and wondered why? We called Canada Post, we emailed them, we filled out online tickets about the problem and no one was able to even tell us about the decision. They all knew nothing. It wasn’t until one of our residents went down to the Post Office to see what the problem might be that they told him of this decision.

People have been living on this street for over 30 years and never heard of such a thing. We have senior citizens in their 90s who have been getting mail continuously all this time and who don’t have the ability to just truck on down to the post office in Port Coquitlam, where we now have to go to get our mail ourselves. And the Post office is only open 9-5 on weekdays so getting it is a major problem for people who work normal jobs.

We want to know how or why this decision was made so suddenly and whether the city of Port Moody is willing to address this problem with us? For years, residents on this hill have been asking for a proper sidewalk so that they weren’t constantly exposed to cars speeding up and down the hill as they walked along the side of the road. In our minds, there is a serious accident here just waiting to happen to some cyclist or pedestrian. And now, the Post Office has deemed us a danger zone, apparently because they have decided there is no place for their carriers to safely walk while delivering mail.

What we have been told is that the costs could only be expended if our taxes were raised to pay for it, and we’re talking millions of dollars! How many other city residents have had to pay to have the city put in a sidewalk on their street? In fact, there is a sidewalk which goes part way up the hill on the East side of the street and then it just stops. For no apparent reason.

We also noticed that almost all the other roads in our neighbourhood at the bottom of the hill were repaved this past spring and summer and we thought, finally, Gatensbury Rd will get the kind of attention it desperately needs. But again, no, the repaving stopped right where Gatensbury Rd starts.

And in just a few more months time, the Evergreen Line, will be operating, with a station at the bottom of our hill on Clarke St. The traffic is already bad on this hill, which was never designed for this volume. What is going to happen when people start using the sky train – driving or walking to and from it?

We ask that council start seriously thinking about our street and possible solutions to the many problems it faces now and will continue to face in the future.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Rich Sobel

Gatensbury, Rd, Port Moody, BC