Jeff Nagel reports on prospects for the new Transportation Minister, Mary Polak:
Expect new Transportation Minister Mary Polak to offer cut-rate introductory tolls on the new Port Mann Bridge and find a way to launch the stalled express bus service over it from Langley to Burnaby.
That’s the prediction from SFU City Program director Gordon Price after the Langley MLA was named to replace former minister Blair Lekstrom, who joined a flood of retiring BC Liberals.
Price said both already-telegraphed moves would please South of Fraser constituents and said it would be “just too embarrassing” if the government opened the bridge without the promised transit route, despite the construction of dedicated lanes and a giant new park-and-ride.
He expects $2 tolls or maybe even just a loonie for the first year to sweeten the bitter medicine of paid crossings of the Fraser River via the expanded Highway 1.
But Price said he doubts the Liberals and Polak will make any bolder moves ahead of next May’s election to reform TransLink’s funding and allow it to embark on the much broader transit expansion local mayors say is necessary.
“What was once a promising transportation future for Metro Vancouver has turned into an unsatisfying debacle until new leadership emerges,” he said.
We must wean ourselves away from dreams of billion-dollar shiny transportation gadgetry if for no other reason we cannot afford them.
One plan fits all is no longer viable. A more viable methodology is incrementalization . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/1yorkshirelad/vancouver.re-boot/Vancouver.re-boot.html
. . . thus providing a more viable, manageable planning paradigm. Vancouver is lucky: it is almost there!
But we mustn’t stop there. Each community requires a recognizable focus centre of amenities. One such possibility is . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/theyorkshirelad72/working.mount.pleasant.html
. . . Mount Pleasant. A historic, well established neighborhood outside the central area MP is nevertheless burgeoning with amenity with the potential for more.
One such amenity would be to alleviate the crushing traffic along the Broadway corridor that grows worse every school year: caused to a certain extent by the previous expedient siting of antipodean UBC and SFU.
I hope these two links add to the conversation . . .