In the Saturday Sun, editied by Canada’s most renowned environmentalist, David Suzuki, a feature story provides some counter-opinion (including mine) to the usual rah-rah for the Gateway proposal:
The Gateway project is a “gigantic leap in the absolute wrong direction,” says University of B.C. Professor Larry Frank, who is internationally famous for his studies of the connection between obesity and the suburbs. “It will entrench us in an auto-dependent future right in the middle of a climate-change debacle.”
A study Frank recently did for the Washington Department of Transport showed that for each 10-per-cent reduction in driving times that motorists experience, typically because more roads have been built, the amount they walk or use transit goes down. That automatically means greenhouse-gas emissions go up.
Preston Schiller, a professor at the University of Western Washington who has studied the transportation systems of the three cities, called the Gateway plan “a big mistake.”
“To me, that sort of expansion you just don’t do in this day and age.”
And former Vancouver councillor Gordon Price, also a close watcher of the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland scene, calls it “a tragic turn in the direction of this region.”
“If [the provincial government] does what it says it’s going to do, we are going the way of Seattle.”
Full story here.
