Janet Valdarchi and her neighbour Brian Ellison stress they are not against logging or log truckers, but they are concerned that traffic coming out a narrow section on Saxton Lake Road is unsafe.

Valdarchi and Ellison are also worried about the additional logging traffic coming onto Saxton Lake Road from a new piece of road built recently to connect to the Reid Lake area.

Valdarchi lives just off of Saxton Road at the turnoff to Vivian Lake, and Ellison lives at Vivian Lake, about 30 minutes northwest of the city past Chief Lake Road.

The connector road from the Reid Lake area comes onto Saxton right at the Vivian Lake turnoff. The two-kilometre stretch of road from there to the beginning of Saxton Lake Road is of particular concern to Valdarchi and Ellison.

They believe the road is too narrow for logging trucks to pass in both directions, and also believe the increased traffic creates a hazard for people who live in the area, especially when the road is slippery.

Both of them say the stretch of road should be widened, particularly if more beetle-killed timber is going to be taken out of the area.

“You just hold your breath — you don’t want to meet a logging truck,” said Valdarchi.

Ellison said he can’t understand why log truck traffic has been diverted from the Reid Lake area onto Saxton Road since there are more people that live in the area of Saxton Road, which turns into Ness Lake Road.

Ellison, who has started up a recreational site at Vivian Lake, is also concerned that logging trucks and RVs in the summer will be a bad mix. “Somebody is going to get hurt, before this is over,” he said.

The two-kilometre stretch of Saxton Road falls under the responsibility of the transportation ministry.

The ministry’s Fort George district manager Rick Blixrud said the difficulty in widening the road is the province owns only the road top, and it would be costly to purchase private property to widen it. He said there have been measures taken to improve safety, including posting proper signage, ensuring plowing and sanding are done and monitoring speeds. Blixrud noted that three speeding tickets were handed out by ministry staff last week, although he didn’t know what type of vehicles were ticketed.

Although Saxton, as a public road, is not technically a radio-assisted road, forest companies have put up radio calling and mileage signs, which Blixrud said he believes will also improve safety. Log trucks will often let other truck drivers know when and where there is other traffic on the road, he said. Log haulers have also been advised of school bus times as well.

Blixrud said he also believes that there is not likely to be log traffic during the summer months. He also noted that the transportation ministry had spent a considerable amount of money in the region to improve roads to stay ahead of the massive amount of beetle-killed timber being logged. He said $9 million — well above the district’s normal budget — was spent fixing up Chief Lake, Ness Lake and Nukko Lake roads to accommodate increased logging traffic.

“In our long-term plan we’ll look at some of those hot spots, but it takes time,” he said, referring to the section of Saxton Lake Road.

Greg Rawling, the Prince George district manager for the forests ministry, said the Reid Lake connector road was built quickly in January to alleviate concerns about logging truck traffic from Reid Lake residents.