The Province tears a strip off James
The Province newspaper's editorial today:It is hard to imagine a more scatterbrained approach to transportation policy than the position taken by NDP leader Carole James on the provincial government's Gateway Project.
To the apparent astonishment of even her own caucus colleagues, James has declared her opposition to the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, perhaps the largest single bottleneck for commuter traffic in Metro Vancouver.
Instead, James wants an increase in public transit -- an absurdly illogical demand given that the bridge has been too congested for years even to consider adding buses to the chaos.
It is all very well for environmentalists to advocate "perfect-world" scenarios in which the working masses are forced to abandon private vehicles in favour of public transit.
But the reality is that for thousands of hard-working Lower Mainlanders there is not now, nor is there likely to be in the near future, any reasonable alternative to using their cars to get to work.
It only adds to the apparent confusion in James' mind that she acknowledges there will be a need for a new bridge in the future, "but not now."
If not now, when?
As it is, the bridge will not be completed until 2013, guaranteeing six more years of fumes and frustration for drivers caught in the traffic.
James calls the Gateway scheme "dumb" and "dumber." We believe the description more accurately fits her own ill-conceived policies.
4 Comments:
The Gateway project isn’t about twinning the Port Mann Bridge. It is about building a container route from Asia at the expense of our livability, our wildlife habitat, and our air quality. The BC Government is using congestion as an excuse to build more and wider roads to facilitate the movement of goods through our region for the Gateway council which is made up of shipping, rail, marine, transport, and Government.
The congestion on our roads is caused by the Government reducing transit services and ignoring the livable region strategies for urban growth.
The reason that transit doesn’t cross the Port Mann Bridge is not because of the congestion, it’s because they rerouted those busses to the end of the Skytrain line to justify ridership.
The same thing is going to happen to all the ‘B-line’ busses from White rock, Surrey and Langley that go to Downtown Vancouver….they are going to be rerouted to the end of the R.A.V. line in Richmond.
The BC liberals were elected partly on the promise to increase the amount of transit in the Lower Mainland and that promise hasn’t been kept.
When Vancouver was the size that Surrey is today it ran 400 busses….Surrey is trying to make do with 83!
Most of our traffic problems could be solved with a proper transit initiative that could be implemented within one year for a half a billion dollars instead of a 4 billion dollar Gateway plan that the Government’s own studies predict will end up costing over 7 billion dollars, won’t be ready until 2013, and will be congested again in a few short years.
The rest of the world applauds us for our livability and implores us not to make the same mistakes they did. There is not one example of a city building its way out of congestion…..not one in the world.
More and wider roads equal more congestion and pollution. It’s a proven fact.
A transit system like the one implemented in Zurich, can be up and running much sooner than 2013, at a cost 1/10th of the Gateway program, and with a 35% improvement in commuter traffic. We can achieve ¾ of our population having a bus pass like they have in Zurich or we can have ¾ of our commuters in single occupancy vehicles like we do now.
Only a devout socialist would so quickly dismiss an amazing business opportunity like the container traffic coming across the Pacific.
Indeed, let's return to those glorious days in the 1990's when the NDP ruled the roost. They nearly killed the mining industry and drove away business left and right. B.C. became a have-not province for the first time in its history.
This is a direct result of the thinking of people like our anonymous poster(s).
Nobody is dismissing the business opportunities in our province, but the BC Liberals are building a Gateway in the wrong place!
Only an environmentally unconscious fool would get behind a plan that the Governments own documents show would severely impact our rare and endangered species, our air quality, and our livability. Most of the containers that come to our Ports are bound for Eastern locations and to get them through the Lower Mainland and over the Rockies is what is causing most of our problems.
BC Government studies state that the Gateway project will be responsible for 42% of the ecoomic impacts of Global warming and the price tag that was touted as $3 billion dollars will be between 7 and 10 billion dollars by the time it is finished. Learn the facts before you start slagging people.
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