Bridging the Gap

On Monday morning, Get Moving BC, a transportation infrastructure group I am a part of, released a study comparing the Fraser River's bridge lanes and capacity to what is happening in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Portland. The full report can be read here--needless to say, Greater Vancouver is way behind in capacity, and way ahead in traffic counts and population. It is not a technical report; it is merely pointing out how our bridge infrastructure compare to other areas.

The main point, from where I sit, is that we need to continually be looking ahead to what is coming next in transportation and transit. We can't have 10-year lulls in building infrastructure. We need to be planning and building at the same time. With Golden Ears coming on stream, the Province is now focused on the new Port Mann. A replacement Pattullo/New Westminster Rail Bridge should be next. But what comes after that? I think a Massey Tunnel replacement should be considered. These bridges also need to be able to carry transit and light rail so we can properly connect the various regional town centres via that means.

The interest from the media has been huge: TV interviews with Global TV, CTV News, OMNI News, and CBC French TV News; radio interviews with CKNW, NEWS1130, Fairchild Radio, The Bill Good Show, and BC Almanac, and print interviews with The Province, Sun, BC News Group, and Maple Ridge Times.

A few things need to be straightened out from the various pieces of coverage. I am a member of Get Moving BC's advisory board, a group of six (two from the south Fraser, four from the north) who chat about transportation issues. GMBC, an ad hoc transportation group, is powered by about a dozen core volunteers (of all political stripes--including we apparently-unallowed-to-discuss-public-policy-issues BC Liberals), and we have a supporters' list of more than 300 people. They like to joke that I'm the token politician. I also blog from time-to-time at the GMBC blog, but am ashamed to say I haven't done so since April. Where does time go?

The report itself was put together by a volunteer, Patrick O'Connor, with a research background. Patrick (yes, a BC Liberal) is running for School Board in New Westminster as part of a non-partisan slate there.

Initially, I was the GMBC spokesman for a few issues, as the other advisory board members got their feet wet in dealing with the media. Recently though, the other members (especially Sheri, Ian, and Mike--none of whom have provincial party affiliations) have done a great job with the press. For this report, they asked me to take the lead as the time commitment was going to be significant--interviews through Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I was happy to do it, as I believe strongly that the Lower Mainland is underserved in all forms of transportation and transit infrastructure--and I believe we need to invest continually in multi-modal bridges that can handle cars, HOV lanes, light rail, cycle paths, and pedestrian facilities. We need it all.

Anyway, I enjoyed talking about transportation these past few days. And The Province's editorial today hit the nail on the head:

Just because the transportation group, Get Moving B.C., has ties to the B.C. Liberals doesn't mean we should ignore the results of its new study which warns that "total gridlock" throughout the Lower Mainland looms unless we build more bridges across the Fraser River.

Anyone who commutes daily over the Fraser knows full well that the eight regional bridges now in use are woefully inadequate to handle the traffic volumes.

And as the study -- Bridging the Infrastructure Gap -- points out, even with the addition of the new Golden Ears Bridge in 2009 along with replacement of the aging Pattullo Bridge and twinning the Port Mann Bridge within the decade, the Lower Mainland will still be behind the eight-ball in terms of too few bridges.

In fact, the study concludes that in addition to the current bridge expansion projects, a further three new eight-lane bridges need to the built.

Most of that additional lane capacity needs to be constructed across the Fraser River because another one million people will take up residence south of the Fraser over the next few decades.

The study tells us that compared to four other western Canadian cities -- Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon -- Metro Vancouver is extremely poorly served by its bridges.

For example, while Metro Vancouver has more than twice Calgary's population, it's served by fewer that half the number of bridge lanes (31 to Calgary's 75).

Even Edmonton, with half as many people as Metro Vancouver, has 60 per cent more bridges.

And on a per capita basis, one Vancouver bridge lane serves 74,194 people compared with Edmonton (26,190), Winnipeg (18,000), Calgary (14,667) and Saskatoon (10,909).

But environmentalists slam this report on the basis of its political connections to the B.C. Liberals and on the premise that if more commuters abandoned their cars in favour of public transit, bridge expansions wouldn't be necessary.

Although well-intentioned, this is wishful thinking and it ignores the reality that this entire region will continue to grow rapidly for many years.

This means there will be more trucks delivering our groceries and other products to super markets and shopping centres and they'll need additional bridge capacity. And yes, additional commuter buses will also need more bridge lanes to cross local waters.

The point is even with expanded use of public transit, there will be more cars so we'll still need more bridges.

It's time our politicians recognized this need and started an intelligent and practical planning process.