Is a bypass the only solution?
Youbou residents have been trying for years, decades even, to solve the problem of choking dust and, when it rains, mud, being hauled into the community on logging trucks.
And a problem it certainly is.
This isn’t your ordinary bit of grit in the air when a truck sweeps past on the highway or other paved surface.
This is pea-soup-fog style dust. Not only can you barely see through it when you encounter it while driving, there are people who have clouds of it invading their homes and yards.
Some speak of having to leave all of the windows closed in the summer to both keep out the dirt and make breathing easy. It make spending time outdoors in the vicinity undesirable.
No one begrudges the truck drivers their jobs, but everyone wants the dust to go away.
For years the fight was to get a truck wash installed. This, residents were promised, would solve their problems. Trucks coming out of the bush from unpaved roads would clean off all the dirt and debris before they headed into town.
But for a variety of reasons, hopes have been dashed, even though the truck wash was duly built.
The dust remains.
There’s still some discussion of whether a differently designed truck wash could still be the solution.
But now speculation has turned to the idea of a bypass road.
The idea is to take the truck traffic out of Youbou entirely.
It’s all still very tentative, with no concrete facts to debate at this point.
There are significant impediments to a bypass road, not the least of which is terrain. It may just be too steep to build the road. If nothing else, this would likely significantly add to the cost of construction.
We imagine there will be a lot of calculations going on, and it may turn out that revisiting a rebuilt truck wash is at least tried before a bypass even sees the light of an engineering study.
In any case, it seems that a solution for residents will likely be years away.
What is heartening is that the issue hasn’t been abandoned. Officials haven’t just thrown up their hands in despair and told the community they’ll just have to live with it. With this kind of determination, maybe the tortoise will win this one in the end.