Keith Baldrey on twinning the Port Mann
From the Surrey Now:What is it about the Port Mann Bridge that arouses such passion, frustration and anger among so many people?
Is it the endless time spent in slow-moving traffic, trying to cross the bridge in either direction as yet another accident grinds movement to a halt?
Or is it the sight of so many vehicles funneling across the river, ready to choke traffic patterns, invade neighbourhoods and spew gas emissions into the air?
Whatever the reason, the bridge has become arguably the biggest political flashpoint in the province right now. The B.C. Liberal government's transportation plan - which features as its centerpiece the twinning of the Port Mann - will dominate most other issues in a key part of the province for many months yet.
As I've written before, nothing seems to get Lower Mainland residents agitated more than ongoing and mounting problems with traffic and transit. I appear weekly on CKNW's Bill Good Show, and no issue can take over our hour-long segment like transportation problems, notably the government's Gateway plan.
Caller after caller - many apparently stuck in traffic on the Port Mann Bridge - demands answers to a situation they say is rapidly deteriorating.
In the political arena, there are at least a dozen ridings where the Port Mann Bridge problem can be a significant issue come the next election. Thousands of commuters on both sides of the Fraser River are also voters, and as debate on transportation priorities heats up, attracting those votes may hinge on providing the right answers.
Which is why right now, Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon is wearing a huge smile and New Democrats are frowning in confusion and despair.
NDP leader Carole James' out-of-the-blue statement that her party is opposed to building another Port Mann bridge may well cost some of her MLAs their jobs and remove any chance the NDP had at winning a few other seats.
Meanwhile, Falcon simply could not get a huge grin off his face when he talked to reporters moments after her policy statement. You can bet the Liberals have done extensive polling that shows where the public is on this issue.
Just what kind of trap James has led her party into became evident a week later when Falcon and Premier Gordon Campbell unveiled a critical part of the planned new Port Mann bridge that has been part of the design all along but which hasn't really received any attention.
Their announcement of dedicated rapid bus lanes, HOV lanes, bus-only on-ramps, and improvements to park-and-ride locations emphasized the green, pro-transit aspect of the bridge plan.
Opponents of the scheme have portrayed a second Port Mann as simply yet another vehicle-choked crossing that would do nothing to improve transit and would serve simply to pollute the air and add to gridlock.
There is no transit crossing the Port Mann right now because it's too crowded and slow. The irony of adding the second bridge is that it gives the critics exactly what they've been demanding - transit at the particular crossing of the Fraser.
James and the NDP either didn't read the fine print of the Gateway plan (the transit part of the twinned Port Mann was part of the tender call that went out months ago) or they did and still made a bad political miscalculation.
Yes, the Port Mann Bridge does indeed arouse passion, frustration and anger.
Evidently, it also causes some politicians to have serious brain cramps once in a while.
8 Comments:
There is no transit crossing the bridge right now because those busses were rerouted to the end of the Skytrain line in Surrey to justify ridership, not because it was too crowded or too slow, and when the R.A.V. line is complete, the B-line busses will be redirected to it, further reducing bus transit.
We need to keep the current bus routes, reopen the old bus routes, and add new busses and bus routes as was promised.
Your anonymous poster has clearly smoked something other than cigarettes. S/he should consult with Mike Harcourt and Glenn Clark about why there are no buses crossing the Port Mann.
Is it a socialist imperative to constantly try to rewrite history?
Robert W.
True.
The magical NDP government did not spend the extra $10 million it would have taken to make the HOV lane reversible over the Port Mann.
If that happened, then buses could have been used on the bridge as so to reduce single vehicle volumes.
There was no plan from any quarter to make the lane reversible. This is genuine revisionism.
The earlier poster is right. Bus routes have been changed in order to funnel people onto the expensive LRT lines.
It is too bad folks don't leave their names - anonymity opens the door to all kinds of commentary that offers no substantiation.
I gladly identify myself as Paul Ritter - webmaster of the SaveDelta.ca site so we can get a good dialog going, and I can learn even more, by directed responses from other informed people.
Now, on this particular issue: I have personally read a great volume of information on traffic, and discussed the matter with people who are knowledgable in the field, from transit, and government agency. In general, if one reviews expansions of highways throughout North America, there is a clear and definable pattern. Not guesswork - measurable, repeatable results: Bigger parking lots; that is to say, 8 lane freeways congested to full capacity. Time frames are invariably shorter than the proponent espouses, and costs as per usual in any govenment managed project are rarely controlled to the proposed budget.
There are, however examples in the world, of successful developments of transportation systems. They can be seen time and again in Europe where wasteful land use is not an option. Densification of cities (a difficult matter to legislate at the provincial level), Massive investment and ongiong subsidizing of transit systems, and finally, when no other option exists than another road - it goes undergroud, or in odd cases well above ground.
Port Mann had to be closed to drive up ridership of Sky-train. It is convinent for the current administration to dismiss this as revisionism. But it actually makes the sick kind of sense that I have come to expect from the BC Provincial government (NDP & Liberal Inclusive). Given that Port Mann has not expanded since prior to Sky-train construction and manages (pathetically) today's traffic, the load 20 years ago could not have required the removal of trasit for reasons of congestion.
Besides, it is no more difficult to revise history to say Port Mann closed for traffic reasons, than to revise it to say it closed for Sky-train usage. However - the matter is likely to be available in historical archives of the time. I'll be sure to do my home-work and post my findings on SaveDelta.ca
Cheers,
Paul
"There was no plan from any quarter to make the lane reversible. This is genuine revisionism."
The notation was in reference that the NDP did not forsee the benifits of making the HOV lane reversible. They simply did not plan ahead on that one.
If they did, the reversible HOV would have accomodated buses, at least during rush periods.
Kind of ironic since it was the NDP that initially started bus service across the Port Mann in the first place, in c. 1975.
"The earlier poster is right. Bus routes have been changed in order to funnel people onto the expensive LRT lines."
Some were, but it is more of a hub and spoke arrangement, since a rapid tranist vehicle will get to B from A faster than one specific bus on the road going the same way.
"There is no transit crossing the Port Mann right now because it's too crowded and slow."
This statement is not accurate.
In actual fact a transit route with queue jumpers was originally planned to be implemented in 2004-2005 (see page 93 of Tanslink's South of Fraser - Area Transit Plan, Final Report - June 2000: http://www.translink.bc.ca/files/pdf/plan_proj/area_plans/south_fr_final.pdf)
Later it appears this was changed to 2007 (see page A8 of Three Year (2005 - 2007) Implementation & Financial Strategy - December 2004 :http://www.translink.bc.ca/files/pdf/plan_proj/ThreeYr05-07Strategic.pdf )
This project is also mentioned in the "KEEPING GREATER VANCOUVER MOVING" Executive Summary - Translink 3-year Plan & 10-year Outlook p6 ( http://www.translink.bc.ca/files/pdf/plan_proj/executive_summary_June17.pdf
) :"Complete queue jumper lanes at the Port Mann and Second Narrows Bridges by 2007;"
Let's not forget that at the time that buses were removed (1986? or 1990? Anyone have a firm answer on that one), the rest of the 401 into Vancouver was only 2 lanes. Buses not only got caught up in the bridge traffic, they got caught up in the painfully slow drive into the city that was unavoidable in the days before the HOV lane
Post a Comment
<< Home