The Editor,
Anyone who thinks the premier’s $3.5 billion Massey Bridge vanity project will reduce congestion, is dreaming, because the proposed bridge will create traffic chaos so bad that today’s congestion will look good in comparison.
There is a corollary that states: “When more lanes are added to an existing highway, the more traffic it will attract.” You cannot blacktop your way out of gridlock.
The premier’s vanity bridge will not reduce congestion.
The sole reason this bridge is being built is to allow deep hulled Panama Max colliers and tankers to load American coal and oil at Fraser Surrey Docks that American ports refuse to handle.
The problem; the four present bridges feeding Vancouver and New Westminster are at capacity and allowing more traffic across the south arm will only create a massive traffic jam.
For $3.5 billion, we will move gridlock three kilometres until it meets the next choke point, unless a reciprocal bridge is built across the north arm.
Every major transit project built since 1980 in the Metro Vancouver area has been a political vanity project, designed to cut ribbons in front of at election time and not to improve regional transit.
This has created a disjointed and grossly user-unfriendly transit system, costing the taxpayer three to four times more than it should. TransLink’s $3 billion Broadway subway and Surrey’s $2 billion LRT is more of the same.
What is needed is an independent panel to assess the need of this massive $3.5 billion bridge and future regional transit projects, to see if they are actually needed, or to propose cheaper, equally effective alternatives.
D. Malcolm Johnston
Delta
