Why a petition about Highway 14 is suddenly talking about Goodmere Road
PETITION UPDATE, July 31, 2026
Thank you to each 4,150 of you who have signed, lots has happened in the past few weeks and update worthy! Read on.
Quick explanation before we get into it, because a few have asked why updates include streets inside Sooke instead of the highway.
Here is the short version. Highway 14 is the only way in and out.
Every one of us is on it.
But a lot of the traffic sitting on it does not need to be there. It is people going from one part of Sooke to another part of Sooke, hopping on the highway for two minutes because there is no other way to get across town.
Give those trips somewhere else to go and the highway gets lighter. Take that option away and they all pile back on.
That is not a theory. We have watched it happen, twice, in the last two years.
What we already learned the hard way
When Charters Road closed for months in 2024, everybody felt it on the highway immediately. Nobody needed an expensive study.
Then earlier this year a sinkhole closed Goodmere Road at Brownsey Boulevard.
Goodmere is the little connector that gets you from Murray Road, across from Otter Point at the highway, over to the traffic circle by the Royal Bank, without touching Highway 14 at all. Close it and every one of those trips goes back onto the highway.
One more is still limping right now. Blythwood Road in Saseenos is down to one lane at Woodlands Road. District crews got it passable and they deserve real credit for that. But passable is not open. One lane is not open.
Get it properly fixed and fully open, and do it before the rain comes back. These streets take cars off the highway every single day for free. Leave them and we find out the hard way again in November.
Small roads, big difference. That is the whole idea.
Now the big one
Same principle, bigger scale.
Throup Road already runs from the roundabout at Church down to Charters. Phillips Road already runs up from the highway toward SEAPARC. Both built. Both open. You use them.
Between Charters and Phillips there is nothing. A gap. That is the only piece missing.
Fill it and Sooke finally has a way to cross town, end to end, without getting on Highway 14. School runs, SEAPARC, the museum, the market, all of it off the highway. Our MLA at the time said back in June 2024 that this one road would do more for congestion than anything else Sooke could do.
That was two years ago. It is still a gap.
And there is the part nobody enjoys saying out loud. What if we experienced a disaster?
Somebody in town got tired of waiting
Matt Banner grew up playing ball at Art Morris Park. So did his family. They still do. That park has been ours since the 1940s, built and looked after by volunteers, one generation handing it to the next.
When Matt heard the current plan might eat into those fields, he did not write a letter. He is a contractor, so he brought in engineers and asked a plain question: does this road actually have to be that wide?
Turns out no. Two lanes, a turning lane, a sidewalk and a bike lane all fit inside 20 metres. Ball fields untouched. Around $15 million.
He paid for that himself. It cost the District nothing. Sooke has already spent $834,000 on drawings for the wider version. Thank you, Matt. That is a genuine gift to this town.
Where it stands right now
It helps to understand what that $50 million actually buys.
It is not one road. It is a full build-out of two separate corridors, Throup and Phillips both, done wide, all at once, with everything upgraded end to end. That is where the near $50 million and the 10 to 21 per cent tax increase come from.
The other option is to build the one missing piece. The stretch between Charters Road and Phillips Road, and nothing else. That single link is what actually gets us across town off the highway, and it is the piece that has never existed. Around $15 million instead of $50 million, and the ball fields stay where they are.
One road that does most of the job now, or two corridors done grand at five times the cost, someday.
On July 13 council voted 5-2 to hold land for the wider version. No land bought. No shovel in the ground. Every real decision now belongs to the council we elect in October.
Who wants what
Kevin Pearson, running for mayor, long-time councillor. Voted against the wide plan. His Sooke First team has promised a funding plan in four months and a 20-metre road open by December 2028 for under $15 million, ball fields kept. That is the most specific promise anyone has made.
Herb Haldane, running for council. Voted against the wide plan. Brought a 1999 map to the table showing this road was drawn 27 years ago.
Al Beddows, running for mayor, long-time councillor. Voted for the wide plan. After hearing residents on July 27 he now wants just the Charters to Phillips piece built, with the extra width still set aside for later, and a referendum once costs are known.
Ty Daniels, running for council. Wants the road, opposes the tax increase.
Helen Ritts, running for council, Sooke Together. Has not sat on council, so there is no vote to point to. Nothing specific published on traffic in their website. Also running with Sooke Together and, all for council, Helen, Steve Sorensen, Susan Belford, and Brian McHatti
Also running with Sooke First: Christine Thomas, Elliott Lifton, Curtis Peterec, Janet Evans - past Sooke Mayor for many years and Rob Pearce - all residents of Sooke.
When candidates knock on your door
Election day is October 17. Ask everybody the same five things.
How wide? What year does it open? What does it cost? Where does the money come from if the grants do not land? And when do Goodmere and Blythwood get permanently repaired and fully reopened, with the money in this year's budget?
The petition, four thousand of your names, you all brought this together. Thank you.
Keep going. Keep sharing.