Nice to see some coverage of Metro Vancouver’s forums – this one on transportation and the economy in Surrey last Wednesday. BC Local News took an us-versus-them approach:
So what happens when you have a panel of speakers, the bulk of whom hail from outside the area, who proceed to tell a Surrey audience that the expansion of local highways is an illogical waste of money?
Well, you get fireworks – and plenty of them ….
Fierce debate erupted over the South Fraser Perimeter Road, a proposed four-lane, east-west corridor linking Deltaport and Highway 1, part of the province’s Gateway Program.
Panelist Gordon Price, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program – and a perennial Gateway critic – said “an un-tolled road that can be used by anyone at anytime” would only clog a route designed to facilitate goods movement.
“We’re going to spend a billion dollars of taxpayer money on this and we don’t have one example of a goods movement corridor that has maintained that function under those conditions anywhere else in North America,” he said.
Fellow panelist Ken Dobell, the former deputy minister to Premier Gordon Campbell and the former chief executive of the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority, dismissed Price’s comment as a “nice political statement.”
Dobell countered that Gateway is essential to the region’s continued economic development.
Brian Lewis, the Province’s Valley columnist, covered some of the same ground:
Several of the panel members, including retired B.C. government deputy minister Ken Dobell and Vancouver Fraser Port Authority executive Chris Badger … made half-hearted attempts at defending the SFPR.
This isn’t a criticism, because, quite frankly, making a case for building this truck freeway is difficult. Nor does speaking against it mean you’re against Deltaport trade.
Only panellist Gordon Price, a transportation and land-use professor at Simon Fraser University and former Vancouver city councillor, asked tough questions in terms of the project’s justification.
“Can someone give me an example where this kind of road has worked elsewhere?” he said.
“We’re spending a billion dollars on a road without any working examples of success [elsewhere], yet when we’ve made commitments to build rail systems we have seen the benefits.”
He quipped: “It’s curious that when we know it doesn’t work, we do it, but when we know it does work, then we don’t do it.”
Darn, wish I’d said that.
And I’m glad I did. I ask the question at every forum on transportation I go to: Name me a region where building more roads and bridges has solved their transportation problems – and that we should be more like? Just one – one place where it’s worked.
I’m still waiting for a good example.
But I wondered, on reflection, what Ken Dobell meant when he said that such an inquiry is a “nice political statement.” And why, as at Surrey, it makes road advocates so viscerally uncomfortable. They literally squirm, their faces turn red, they get angry. And still they put forth no answer to the question. Not one good example.
‘Panelist Gordon Price, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program – and a perennial Gateway critic – said “an un-tolled road that can be used by anyone at anytime” would only clog a route designed to facilitate goods movement.’
The new Port Mann Bridge will have a toll, so I assume you’re referring to the NFPR and the SFPR, … both of which were identified as major priorities in the flawed, employer/landowner driven LRSP.
An answer to your question, Gordon, but I don’t think the writer understood it: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/letters/story.html?id=c3051199-5575-4f9a-82bf-84bb68e7f14a
It looks like Don Chalmers who wrote the above letter to The Province editor is an engineer at Delcan Corporation: http://www.surrey.ca/Doing+Business/Tenders+RFQs+RFPs/Tenders/Closed/2007/M.S.1707-003-11.htm
Good detective work, Romeogolf!
I have long believed that it’s a principal of sound political debate and activism that underlying economic interests should be at least visible to the audience, if not declared and re-declared on every occasion.
No one doubts that proponents of Gateway and other highway projects have economic interests at stake, but so too do the opponents. Sauce for the good, sauce for the gander.
One thing you neglected to mention, Budd, is that the opponents also have personal interests at stake, i.e. that global warming threatens our very existence. Proponents of Gateway don’t give this serious consideration.
I live in Vancouver, and can count on one hand how many times I’ve been to Surrey in the last 10 years, meaning I have no authority to talk about Gateway. But, I would like to ask a question to everyone here anyway.
Will Vancouver fail? A victim of its own success?
The fastest growing part of the Lower Mainland is Surrey. Even with a condo tower going up on every corner in Vancouver, Surrey will soon overtake Vancouver’s population. Eventually, Surrey could become the centre of the Lower Mainland, making Vancouver a suburb.
This is essentially what happened to New Westminster all those years ago when the rail road went in. Now, with congestion, transportation, warehousing, and land costs, wouldn’t it make sense to eventually move everything back across the Fraser? The port is on one side of town, all the warehouses and truck/train routes are on the other.
Will Vancouver become like West Vancouver? An expensive suburb with a shopping village and condo-beach as its downtown — all the office space and industry jobs in a different city.
I often think about this because, although I live in Vancouver, the only jobs I’ve ever had are in business parks out in the suburbs. Most of the plans for the future only talk about densifying neighbourhoods to cope with where all these new people will live. But, there’s never talk about where all these people will work. If they follow the (accelerating) trend, they’ll all be working in Surrey. Shouldn’t we just concentrate new housing density over there?
My spouse and I live close to downtown because we like it. It’s a great dining, shopping, cafe-sipping, entertainment, relaxing district. Unfortunately, both of us could only find work in the suburbs and have to do reverse commutes. It would make complete sense for us to live further out, closer to our jobs and help the environment by doing so.
Sorry to ramble on a bit, I hope the gist of my comment makes sense.
That’s actually part of the Livable Region Strategic Plan – that Surrey form a second downtown for the region. That eliminates the bottlenecks at the bridges for commuters. Surrey is more central to the region than Vancouver – it really makes little sense to require business commuters to travel to one end of the region (the location of which is based on the need to access historical transportation systems (i.e. water) that are no longer required for central business district jobs) – it would only be worse of downtown were located at UBC.
“One thing you neglected to mention, Budd, is that the opponents also have personal interests at stake, i.e. that global warming threatens our very existence. Proponents of Gateway don’t give this serious consideration.”
How is global warming a personal interest? I would have thought it was clearly a collective interest, not an individual one.
Your statement that proponents of Gateway don’t take global warming seriously may be your opinion, but it’s hardly a fact. It’s the standard, off-the-rack rhetoric that substitutes for thought, but it has no intellectual basis whatsoever.
20% of Canada’s GHGs come from light cars and trucks. So why is all the of the political energy and rhetoric around climate change being directed at this one minority source of GHGs? In any other context if someone were to say that X is a serious problem, of which 20% comes from Y, and therefore we must immediately get serious and put all our efforts onto reducing Y, no one would have any difficulty in realizing that they were being grossly manipulated, even swindled.
I wish politicians would take our tax dollars more seriously. Wasting 1 billion on gateway is extremely short sighted.
As it is I walk to work (30 minutes each way) and use my vehicle less than 800 KM a month (outdoor recreation)…
Budd, 40% of the Lower Mainland’s GHG emissions come from vehicles — the largest single source in our region. You understate the problem by generalizing the statistic at a national level.
If proponents of Gateway care about global warming, please demonstrate this as the intellectual basis for their assertions are neither borne out by international experience, nor those with actual transportation expertise.
To reiterate what Gordon Price said above, “It’s curious that when we know it doesn’t work, we do it, but when we know it does work, then we don’t do it.” Gateway in a nutshell.
I don’t know about you, Budd, but I look at what is happening around the globe and I feel a palpable threat to my personal existence, a personal stake in our future direction. Yet, I look around me and see a great number of people who do not feel the same sense of urgency. Otherwise, they would be making significant changes to their behaviour NOW.
A majority of individuals will have to make the appropriate reduction in their ecological footprint for the collective interest to be manifested in the proper direction. People can do it voluntarily or by government regulation. If either fail, nature will be the force that no one will stop.
“Budd, 40% of the Lower Mainland’s GHG emissions come from vehicles — the largest single source in our region. You understate the problem by generalizing the statistic at a national level.”
If you have a source for this statistic, please quote it. What does it matter what the Lower Mainland situation is, the Kyoto Treaty is signed by national governments, not local governments.
Do you plan to eventually examine the individual contribution of every precinct and neighborhood, one at a time? What sense would that make?
Wait a minute. That is what you intend to do, isn’t it, to make this global issue a micro level, personal one:
“… I look around me and see a great number of people who do not feel the same sense of urgency. Otherwise, they would be making significant changes to their behaviour NOW.
A majority of individuals will have to make the appropriate reduction in their ecological footprint … ”
Obviously, the choice to package this as if it were a personal choice issue is the result of some marketing decisions arrived at by professional fundraisers and propagandists working for NGOs involved in the climate change issue. They probably call it “educational” considerations, but really it’s marketing spin.
I saw Gordon Price at many events, lectures and also when he served with city council.
He’s an complete and total asshole and and a shelfish bastard who doesn’t even know how to properly treat his fellow human being.
I was with some colleges today at Globe 2008 and I saw him mistreat an autistic man whom I had met yesterday afternoon.
If Gordon Price had any manners or even some compassion to other people he’d find that same autistic man and apologize to him for being so rude.
Just as I thought, Budd. Nothing to back up your assertions and trying to hide it with slick obfuscations. No answer to Gordon’s question, huh?
Obviously, you take the “poverty of the commons” approach whereby you want to avoid personal responsibility by foisting it onto the collective: “If no one else is doing their part, why should I?”
And how is your name calling relevant, Graham?
Obviously, you take the “poverty of the commons” approach whereby you want to avoid personal responsibility by foisting it onto the collective: “If no one else is doing their part, why should I?”
I think the phrase you’re trying to reference is “tragedy of the commons”, meaning a common property resource such as a fishery that is exploited far too heavily because of an absence of ownership/appropriate regulation. And that’s what happens to air and water sheds in the absence of regulation or quasi ownership rights, as envisioned in the various cap and trade systems.