- Three business reps write an op-ed in support of the Massey Bridge in The Sun:
One their reasons:
In its own studies, Metro Vancouver estimates our population will grow by more than one million new residents by the year 2041. With that in mind, we need to invest in a long-term solution that prepares us for this explosive growth over the next two decades. If we want to be a world-class region, we need to invest in world-class infrastructure.
Growth, in other words, will be massively directed south of the Fraser, on to the agricultural lands of what will become an industrialized delta.
Our organizations share Metro Vancouver’s concerns for environmental protection and sustainable growth. However, given our involvement in the planning for this project over the last four years, we are confident this project falls in line with Metro Vancouver’s own Regional Growth Strategy.
Well, no it doesn’t. It’s not in the regional plan (indeed it goes against the very principle of a compact urban region) and it wasn’t even in any provincial plan (a previous transportation minister had even ruled it out.)
But apparently now we need all ten lanes ’cause that’s world class.
Is this ‘sub’text? I just read this as text. This is the Ministry’s very open rationale, by and large – ‘The bridge is necessary to future-proof our economic interests’.
That said, they’ve delivered no proof that the bridge is necessary. Just ethereal assumptions about needing ‘world class infrastructure’ – whatever that means.
There’s a fundamental question that does not appear to have an answer. Who are these 1,000,000 people, demographically speaking?
If they follow the recent immigration patterns and continue to be wealthy Chinese, then they will want single-family houses on this side of the Fraser (or maybe White Rock?). If the pattern changes, and it becomes Syrian refugees, they will likely move to more affordable multi-family dwellings south of the Fraser. If the pattern changes and becomes more millennials (although this seems unlikely), then they’ll want small condos close to downtown.
My point is, we are projecting 1,000,000 more people, but no one has any research data about them. Will they be buyers? Renters? Families? Singles? Cyclists? Drivers?
It’s like owning a store and predicting new customers, but then not having any market research about them.
Perhaps the regional growth strategy, as in Transportation Plan 2040 (more here https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/2040-transportation-plan-update-required ) is flawed and needs updating ?
Growth will happen in ALL parts of MetroVan but more where it is cheaper, i.e. Fraser South. Unclear to me why there is 0 discussion on that, or more land as part of a growth strategy ?
Projections for population, dwelling units, and employment by municipality:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/TableA1-PopDwelUnitEmpProjforMVSubregMuni.pdf
In the table provided by Jeff we can clearly see that Surrey will soon have a larger population than Vancouver.
Surrey gets a 70% growth in population, Richmond about 50% and Vancouver about 25%.
Vancouver gets a projected 25% growth in employment, yet Richmond and Burnaby get 50% and Surrey over 70%.
If Vancouver continues to be successful in attracting residents to its core then they will either be wealthy and retired, or they will increasingly be working in outside suburbs – across bridges. Some will probably be going to work across more bridges in neighbouring municipalities too.
I still don’t see where these numbers come from. Is it like the Bible? It says so, so it must be true?
As the report outlines, those numbers are a consolidation of each municipality projecting their future growth, based on past growth (over 27 years), dwelling unit growth, employment growth, etc. See the regional context statements for each municipality.
It isn’t the result of a marketing campaign to go and attract new people from subpopulation A or demographic B. It isn’t like Metro controls immigration, whether it is within Metro, from the rest of BC, the rest of Canada, or from outside Canada.
And I suppose if it came down to it, we wouldn’t have to plan for them. But we should understand that this is the best estimate of how many will arrive, and we can either plan on how to deal with it, or just wait and see how it all works out without a plan.
Point taken, but planning like that seems so wrong. How can you plan neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools, bike lanes, etc, if we don’t even know what types of people are coming and what their preferences are? If we go solely on “past performance indicates future performance” extrapolations, then we should plan on having zero public schools and only mansions and rental studio apartments in Vancouver.
The Metro table link provided by Jeff clearly indicates a balance (no Eric, not a disparity) between Vancouver and Surrey populations by 2040. But this is a metropolis, not two isolated cities.
The current SkyTrain-linked cities (all but one North of the Fraser) will grow to accommodate 2.4 million people on the Burrard peninsula, Surrey rise and Coquitlam rise. To any casual observer that will clearly be a huge majority over the flats of Delta where the Massey bridge is supposedly desperately required.
You might say disparity, I didn’t.
The Massey Bridge project includes a stretch of Hwy 99, which will be widened to accommodate the rapid-transit buses, up to and including the Hwy 91 interchange, which is about half a kilometre from Surrey Newton (the second fastest, after Surrey Centre, growing part of Surrey). The SkyTrain you mention terminates about 5 km to the north of Newton.
The next fastest growing Surrey region is the distant South Surrey, about 15 km south from where the SkyTrain terminates. Easily accessed from any of the four exits from Highway 99 and the Massey crossing.
It’s all clear here:
http://www.surrey.ca/business-economic-development/1418.aspx
Would you like me to crunch the numbers for Ladner, Tsawwassen and White Rock too? I don’t think we need calculate the volume of traffic from the US but it’s not insignificant.
Anonymous: “You might say disparity, I didn’t”
Eric, are you posting under multiple user names again?
Not all computers function exactly the same. I have only one head. Think different.
Eric/Anonymous:
If you are one person, you have one head sure. If you are collection of individuals promoting a single viewpoint, then no.
When you create, maintain, and utilize multiple IDs, which is separate from how many physical computers you use, it reduces the quality of the conversation for all, IMO. Especially if those multiple IDs have conversations with each other.
Eric/Anon, geometry and zoning has and always will place millions more people north of the Fraser than south, with the exception of the Surrey rise. Sure, we can expect White Rock, Crescent Beach and Tsawwassen to increase in population, and for the traffic to/from the US to bump up periodically, but the rate of increase and density will always be lower than NoF communities that should receive proportionate transportation spending in appropriate modes.
The regressive auto-centric planning for 10-lane bridges and freeways dependent on depleting fossil fuels with unstable prices, and the accompanying planned shortage of adequate transit investments in Metro cities that are orders of magnitude denser, has been discredited so many times it’s a wonder the government isn’t backdating its correspondence to last century.
You forget commercial & industrial growth. It is not only about residential growth. Metrovan is THE major export/import hub for all of Canada from Asia. Yes there is some ship/oil/container traffic to Prince Rupert, but most is coming here. (btw/realted: Northern gateway is essentially dead. KM is not.) We need modern transportation, storage and harbor infrastructure for trucks, containers and people working at these facilities. They ain’t biking there.
Canada is growing, as is Asia. As such roads need to keep up. We can toll them. In fact I wonder we we allow US trucks, fueling up in the US as it is generally cheaper, to drive and damage our roads for free. Tolls are coming, and your pension depends on it as these bridges might be bought by CPP (or OMERS or some other pension fund) one day.
And yes, we need more $s for public transit in other parts of MetroVan too. Looking at the mess in North-Van and W-Van, for example, one wonders why LionsGate is not a triple decker bridge yet or why there isn’t even a hint of a subway plan for Marine Drive.
Many areas that need more $s, for decades to come.
No one is forgetting commercial transportation. It represents, and will represent for a long time, a small slice of traffic volumes. It is not a justification for 10 lanes. Only sprawling car-dependence is a justification.
You’re ideas are self defeating. Encourage sprawl by building oversized highways then try to serve them with subways afterward.
It makes no sense.
What makes sense to you ? More bikelanes and more subways and what else ? No more harbor expansions ? Shift traffic and jobs and associated tax revenue to Seattle and Portland ? No more expansion south of Fraser ? Highrises and shoeboxes in the sky only ? No more yards ?
“What makes sense to you?”
How about making choices, instead of calling for more of everything, while pretending we can somehow pay for it all, and simultaneously manage the environmental impact of it all?
I am not calling for more of everything. I am merely stating that MORE is required in a country that is growing by natural birth and immigration, and especially in a region that will take in 1M people in the next 25 years. Plenty of “environment” in Canada. Plenty. As such chopping down a few trees in N-Van or W-Van to create more land or push dykes into Fraser River delta or into shallow muddy bays is too much to ask ?
Where will the traffic go ? People have to live somewhere AND one here they shop, eat, drive around, consume and as such need more parks, roads, subways, shopping centers, condos, houses, goods & services ..
Yes, environmental degradation is asking too much. I could repeat for the third time that Vancouver’s core continues to grow population and jobs and traffic is shrinking. But you’d just ignore that inconvenient truth for the third time.
Where will the traffic go? It will shrink if done right. Commercial traffic may well continue to grow and it can fill in the gaps created by fewer cars.
I get that. Not everybody buys into this “dense is beautiful, tiny condo is awesome” worldview though. have a great weekend. Why not take a drive south of the Fraser for some fresh air ?
Not everybody has to live very dense. There is room for the whole range of housing types while still being dense enough to make cars an option rather than a necessity. There are still houses in the West End. Kitsilano, Strathcona, Mount Pleasant and Fairview Slopes all have a range of densities that don’t require a car.
I try not to drive unless there is no other reasonable option. So I won’t be going south of the river just to breathe air that is about the same as where I live.
It’s true, Gregor told us that we must be ready for a million more people.
We must build it because they are coming. The mayor’s said so.
No one should give any weight to any justification of “because world-class” anything. I have never heard leaders of any other city (you know the ones they are comparing Vancouver to) refer to themselves “world-class”. They just ARE. Vancouver needs to stop dreaming of what it wants to be when it grows up, just grow up, start acting like an adult and making real plans based on reality and defensible facts for the future.
Destroying the agricultural basin, converting everything to a giant container parking lot, roads to take almost all over those containers somewhere else (ps: hey guys,rail is great for that) is not a viable future for the region. By the time all these roads and bridges are built, they’ll be building such large container ships they’ll be bypassing Port Metro anyway as the port is too small.
It makes indeed sense to move most harbours out of Vancouver and N-Van as land is so valuable in N-Van and vancouver now We could easily move it further south and west into the marshlands off Delta, Richmond or Surrey. We could easily have 10 Delta Ports in the mudflats off and more dense, subway connected mid- and highrises close to water in N-Van and Vancouver’s harbor.
Most mudflats and estuaries in North Vancouver have already been destroyed for the port and railway. Let’s not destroy more in Delta.
Plenty of nature in Canada. Not to many port facilities for a growing region though. N Van and downtown has higher land values. Perhaps having no railway or port there (but housing or more parks) makes more sense that protecting tidal marshlands ? Other regions create more land, but MetroVan cannot ? How come ?
If you take a look at the dimensions of the new generation of container ships (eg: MSC Oscar 18000 teu), you’ll discover Vancouver’s port facilities are simply too small and will be byassed in favour of a few US ports. Lion’s Gate Bridge clearance is short by 12m and the interior berths don’t provide the draft without more dredging. Even Deltaport does not pass draft, never mind having available 6+ tall enough cranes to unload / load in the window. Even the proposed Massey bridge at 57m will not accommodate the 73m clearance. There’s a lot more infrastructure than a new bridge that needs to be bought to make that vision a reality.
Just as the Explorer of the Seas bypassed Vancouver for Ogden Point, so too will these bypass Vancouver.
Trading the best agricultural lands in Delta for housing or a expanded port facilities makes no sense either way. Neither does replacing a tunnel with a pipe dream.
I am arguing for more land. A new port, or 4, plus more housing and parks could be built west of Delta and west of Richmond, or west of the airport island. We need to look at these options as these areas get shallower and shallower every year as the Fraser River dumps a lot of silt every year. Or south of Surrey in Boundary Bay.
And if you follow the shipping industry closely, you’ll note that it has turned off these mega-ships in favour of the smaller ships which are more flexible and cost-effective. Whatever the arguments for or against the port facilities and bridge, this isn’t one of them.