Editor,
After reading your article on planned tourism signage upgrades, (Highway, city tourist sign overhaul planned, News, Oct. 9), I felt compelled to add my views on this topic. As you stated in your article, there are a lot of people driving by our front door, and proper signage is an excellent way to lay out the welcome mat for these folks. However, all of the signage in the world welcoming the world to our community will be for not until we address the negative signage adorning the gateway to our city that is keeping many people moving right on by.
The signage I am referring to are the big, beautiful, well-illuminated signs that are on all of our service station properties advertising our gas prices. It is a simple marketing fact, that if you desire to draw people in, you do so with a universally required commodity at a hot price with great signage. Gasoline certainly fits the bill as does the signage that advertises the prices, however, at $1.38 per litre, Revelstoke is way out in left field with the pricing aspect. A drive 20 minutes down the highway will fetch you gas at $1.31 per litre as is Sicamous just 45 minutes away. An hour drive to Enderby can sell you gas at $1.27 per litre. That’s 11 cents per litre less for an hour drive down the highway. Come on!
Until the obscene gas prices are corrected in our community, people will continue to drive right on by regardless of the signage proposed. I realize that the local merchants do not set the prices, however if enough of our citizenry filled up as much as possible while in Sicamous or Enderby, the people who do set the prices would get the message, and stop this nonsense of gouging us at the pumps. Signage is important to draw more people into our city from the highway. Let it start with the ones we already have in place.
John Teed,
Revelstoke