Sorting out the poll
The Surrey Now gets to the bottom of the LRC's recent Gateway poll:B.C.'s transportation minister isn't buying a poll commissioned by the Livable Region Coalition that suggests 73 per cent of B.C.ers would rather spend cash on improving public transit to fight climate change than on the province's Gateway infrastructure program.
The LRC poll, conducted by Strategic Communications in March, surveyed 606 British Columbians, with a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent 19 times out of 20; it asked if they'd "support or oppose redirecting money from the province's road building plans into better public transit in order to help stop climate change."
The question included a preamble that the government's own data shows Gateway "will indeed increase emissions that cause climate change. Yet in order to meet the emissions reduction targets set by this same government, the regional transportation authority has said that public transit use must double by 2020."
Ian Bruce, of the David Suzuki Foundation, said the results "confirm what we have heard across Canada, that the public wants investment in public transit as the foremost means to tackle greenhouse gas emissions in our cities."
But Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, wasn't moved.
"I put very little stock in that poll," said Falcon, who used to be in the polling business before entering politics.
"The pollster they used - Strategic Communications - their list of clients is a who's who of left-wing groups including the B.C. NDP, the federal NDP, the Ontario NDP, Jack Layton campaign. There's absolutely no surprise here that they come out with that," Falcon said.
"We know the support level for that bridge (a twinned Port Mann Bridge) is in the high 70s."
"It's a cruel hoax to think you can add buses on a corridor that has 14 hours a day rush hour congestion and think for a minute that anyone's going to take those buses," Falcon said. "They won't. But under a newly twinned Port Mann Bridge with special transit priority lanes, with design built into the highway to allow transit to get past whatever queues might be there, that's how we're going to get people on buses and transit."
GetMovingBC's position is simple: it's not an either/or answer with roads and transit--it's both.
posted by Jordan Bateman @ 8:24 PM
7 Comments:
Again, Kevin Falcon's reasoning is based on the assumption that twinning the Port Mann and adding one lane in each direction on either side of the bridge will reduce congestion.
But all the evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, Kevin Falcon himself has admitted that highway expansion will not reduce congestion.
So twinning the Port Mann bridge won't do anything to help move transit across the bridge.
Queue jumpers and congestion pricing probably would help. But why not add those now instead of after the bridge is twinned? Wouldn't that be a much more cost effective solution?
Why do fiscal conservatives like Falcon support a very expensive solution that they know won't work, especially when there is a much less expensive, more efficient solution available?
Surprise Surprise
Its almost as though this blog were written by a BC Liberal staffer...
Here's an example of how reducing roadway actually reduced congestion:
Expected freeway traffic horrors don't develop
Fewer vehicles on road; BART posts ridership record
Patrick Hoge, Erin McCormick, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The nightmare commute scenario that many feared after Sunday's East Bay freeway inferno still had not materialized by Wednesday, with many motorists opting to take public transit rather than drive...
"We know the support level for that bridge (a twinned Port Mann Bridge) is in the high 70s."
Is there any evidence to support this?
If the goal really was to reduce congestion and help goods move faster, investing 2 billion dollars directly into public transit would have a much bigger affect and would make Vancouver the pride of North America.
Regarding the San Francisco comments – the same can be said when transit is not operating. Do you remember a few years ago when Coast Mountain Bus Company was on strike for a couple months. The commuter traffic did not increase.
The bottom line is humans adapt to the situation presented to them.
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