Roads aren’t traffic solution
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 B.C. 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 buses to the end of the SkyTrain line to justify ridership.
The same thing is going to happen to all the ‘B-line’ buses from White Rock, Surrey and Langley that go to downtown Vancouver… they are going to be rerouted to the end of the RAV line in Richmond.
The B.C. 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 buses. 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 Gateway plan that the government’s own studies predict will end up costing over $7 billion, 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.
Don Hunt
Delta
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