Dear Editor,
When facts risk getting in the way of good writing and reasonable arguments, I suppose advertising is the best way to skirt around the truth and insert propaganda and junk science to unsuspecting citizens.
Last Friday’s full page ad placed on behalf of the Corporation of Delta (signed by the mayor and CAO) was enlightening, not because it contained any verifiable truths (quite the opposite), but because it revealed the depths of desperation that the now rudderless crew will resort to in order to save a sinking ship (the 10–lane Massey Bridge) since the higher officers (i.e. the B.C. Liberal government) have disappeared.
Fear not: A rival rescue boat has just entered the water to save the fair but beleaguered province from development on farmland, financial, ecological and traffic oblivion.
Lone wolf Delta Mayor Lois Jackson must get her information from an alternate universe, because virtually every point made in favour of a huge bridge over a twinned tunnel is either false, redundant to her argument, or misleading.
Delta’s own claim that “12 per cent of traffic at peak hours is commercial trucks” backfires when one considers that one truck (which could travel at other times) takes up the space of three cars, increasing gridlock by up to 36 per cent.
Environmentalists, academics, seismic and transit experts, not to mention experiences elsewhere in the world, have shown that a submerged tunnel is the better option for commuters’ ease and safety, fish, birds, farmland and the public purse.
Now that the Port of Vancouver has reneged on its earlier need for deeper dredging to make way for bigger fossil fuel-laden ships up the river (perhaps a position taken to save its governing board from appearing not to be working in the public interest), the industrialists’ support for the bridge has effectively waned.
The Delta mayor has never been properly exposed for her increasingly isolated and incomprehensible stance, when she can have her citizens’ new crossing in two-thirds the building time with a tunnel.
Could it be that the Delta tax base would be rapidly expanded when 10 lanes pave the way for massive development and the justification for the now-empty mega-mall on the way to the BC Ferries Tsawwassen terminal?
We have lots of commuter dilemmas in Metro Vancouver, but sound planning is the solution, not giving in to capitalists’ dreams.
Glen Andersen
Richmond
