Our ‘Sunshine Coast correspondent,’ John Whistler, continues his series on the massive road-and-bridge project proposed by the Province.
Do We Need a Sunshine Coast Fixed Link – 3
The BC Government public comment background material includes a Multiple Account Evaluation (MAE) which reviews a number of benefits and impacts associated with the various proposed fixed links to the Sunshine Coast.
The MAE includes high level rankings as to what is better or worse. Because the status quo option to retain the existing ferry services is not included, readers need to manage this comparison on their own
Customer Service
The rankings for Travel Time Reliability are debateable. While continuous 24-hour access would be much better, the fixed-link road options are not offering a time savings (the bridge links would). All fixed-link options would be subject to service interruption or delay risks because of maintenance, weather, landslides and crashes, just as BC Ferries have service risks because of weather, mechanical issues and overloads.
(Are public transit and BC Ferries held to a higher standard than roads in the case of service interruptions or delays? We see this when a crash that closes the Lions Gate bridge barely rates mention in the news and a Skytrain interruption is front-page news.)
The rankings for Accessibility to Emergency Services are also curious. Any of the fixed-link options would require deploying new police and medical emergency services over 25, 50 or 200 km of new roads in regions that have no development at this time. The existing BC Ferry services include comprehensive emergency contingency plans and are closer to off-site emergency services.
The Sunshine Coast already has emergency hospital medical services in Powell River and Sechelt. Any associated emergency medical transports would likely continue by helicopter, even with any of the road-link options. Indeed, some residents are concerned that a fixed link would facilitate closing one or both existing emergency services and consolidating them in North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Hospital. Or is that one of the reasons for the better ranking?
The Emergency Evacuation criteria is interesting. One has to wonder what type of emergency would require a wholesale evacuation, other than a Fort McMurray type of wild fire. In this scenario the fixed link might be cut off or subject to gridlock because of congestion. The most resilient emergency evacuation method, covering many different evacuation scenarios, would be by ocean, as numerous docks already exist throughout the Sunshine Coast.
It would be interesting to quantify in more detail the safety implications and costs to society. Before the upgrade for the 2010 Olympics, HWY 99 was known as the “highway of death”. Since the upgrade, traffic collisions are now reduced to around 100 a year, with two fatalities. Though not perfect, BC Ferries have a much better safety record.
Economic Development
It sounds reasonable that property values would increase and construction would be encouraged by a fixed link. This might require an order-of-magnitude difference, such as doubling, to justify the costs of a fixed link. This benefit is a double-edged sword. Although housing costs on the Sunshine Coast are low by Vancouver standards, it is one of the attractive features for new residents, and affordability is already a significant issue and barrier for the existing population.
One existing economic development opportunity that would not need a fixed link is the need for care for the significant and growing seniors population.
Socio-Community
The Socio-Community criteria are a mixed bag of factors that might subjectively be called “liveability”. Many existing residents like the slower paced “island lifestyle” as a result of the existing BC Ferries service.
Income equity is missing from this section. Would people of all incomes benefit from a fixed link or would this disproportionately benefit higher incomes or existing property owners?
Increased traffic volumes from a fixed link would be expected and explains the worse rankings to Effects on Population Supporting Infrastructure. This would impact roads on the Sunshine Coast, Metro Vancouver and Hwy 99, increasing pressure for additional road expansions. At a minimum, local-road maintenance costs would increase resulting in increased taxes or reductions in other local services.
Environment
Not surprisingly, the existing status-quo ferry service appears to be the favoured option from the environmental perspective. Indeed, using cost as a rough proxy, there could be significant environmental impacts from the fixed link options.
First Nations Considerations
Last but not least, the wild card – with discussions underway. No doubt these discussions will be difficult given the political climate and that this issue has been on-going since 1858, when the Colony of British Columbia was unilaterally declared. In particular, this will impact the ability to achieve the economic benefits from the natural resource development potential.
There is a beautiful simplicity in the notion that someday one could board a passenger ferry at Waterfront Station, pay a reasonable fare and sail directly to downtown Gibsons, Sechelt and Powell River.
Furthermore, the service could act as an infinitely more affordable supplemental to the existing car-carrying ferry contract with highways, increasing as time goes by to near-complete replacement with the exception of sea-going freight.
The capital cost of a new passenger ferry fleet, terminals and even a decent connecting bus or tram service at each Sunshine Coast destination would be a fraction of the cost of new highways and bridges. Moreover, a significant portion of the operational cost of passenger ferries would be recovered through the farebox. The external costs . . . . . well, there really isn’t a comparison when a massive highway project induces orders of magnitude more sprawl and environmental impact and overwhelms public budgets.
Why aren’t decent, affordable alternatives being compared to this over-inflated fixed link balloon?
Yes these passenger ferries are good options but the economic impact would be far far smaller. With a road Lower Sunshine Coast would likely grow from 30,000 people to 100,000 in 2 decades, say 3500/year or over 10% growth annually. With a ferry that might be half at best. A toll road can be self-financing with say a $20/crossing toll.
It would benefit all groups. of course whiners will come out in force and lament the new higher house prices and increased traffic. Many folks prefer status quo. I guess with this attitude we would never have built a train to Vancouver from Calgary either 125+ years ago.
Money can be borrowed at sub 2%. Unclear to me what the hesitation is.
Thomas what problem are you trying to solve? Many other solutions are available that do not waste money. In fact most are free.
100,000? Perhaps. But the impact on family budgets with multiple car ownership, driving kilometres for a loaf of bread, poorer health, and the tolls will all have an affect. And the quiet forested mountainsides that are the primary reason people live there? Gone. Replaced by tarmac, arterial din and triple garage door facades — if the available affordable per capita energy holds for the next 80 years. Good luck with that. Anything beyond 2025 is not guaranteed.
100,000 people living in three compact towns served by regular passenger ferries, weekly provisions brought by sea cargo, local transit and car share — al at affordable cost — is another story.
Personally, I love having a pub, a department store, three grocery stores, four coffee outlets, and 25 retail outlets, not to mention a workplace, a town square ringed by public amenities (library, community centre …), an entire social network and at least one decent transit connection all in a 10-minute walk of home.
Subdivisions vs real towns. It’s a matter of quality of life.
Who’s to say that? It depends how it’s planned. It could be centred on local retail, park and rides, etc.
Geographically Gibsons is 10km closer to downtown than White Rock.
A subdivision usually doesn’t have local retail, only centralized malls not often within walking distance.
Regarding Gibsons, yes, it’s been underrated for decades. We have an acquaintance who lives there six months of the year (she’s an ex-pat Canadian living in the US in winter) and she mentioned that all her friends in Gibsons often discuss a desire to have a passenger ferry run to downtown Vancouver and leave the car at home.
Perhaps a road link and a seabus style service to downtown might not cannibalise each other?
A passenger ferry from Burrard Harbour to Powell River is neither beautiful nor simple. With ‘reasonable’ fare? Hilarious. Those ferries have been tried again and again on the high-traffic Van to Vic route and have failed on business viability; high costs, low ridership, low revenue.
The only “decent, affordable alternative” is for people to find ways ~not~ to travel.
The Anvil Bridge will get built, you will drive it, and you will enjoy it. I don’t know how Thomas puts up with the kids on this blog.
The Sunshine Coast discussion all seems based on a central hypocrisy: density in all Vancouver neighbourhoods=good. Density where the 1% have their cottages=bad.
You can achieve medium and even high densities on small waterfront village and town footprints.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kz3HLmgyflg/T5Cdch7h4hI/AAAAAAAACCU/RHzd5910rds/s1600/Dock+at+ferry+terminal+in+Lucerne+town%252C+Lucerne%252C+Switzerland.jpg
What?
That’s a bit of a spin on things. My read of critical commentary is far more that none of the critics believe that sustainable development simply isn’t going to be planned for if a road crossing is built.
Wrong Bob,
Density good. Sprawl bad. Doesn’t matter where.
That doesn’t rule out rural. Living off the land is great. But if you drive long distances to a parking lot every day, or even several times a week – that is not rural.
I am one of six people who live on Anvil Island year round. I live on one side of the southern peninsula of the island, and the family of five who are the Caretakers at the summer camp, live on the other side.
The truth of the matter is a fixed link across Anvil Island (from the document I am guessing this would be the government’s preferred option) could turn my cabin into prime waterfront real estate, provided access from the island to the new highway was made available, and possibly hydro. Power and transportation are the primary expenses involved in living here, and they are very significant—around $7000 annually. In addition to those potential savings, we could subdivide our acreage and sell off lots.
And yet, despite the potential financial windfall a bridge might bring for me, I cannot wrap my brain around why the Liberal government seems to want to accelerate into the brick wall that awaits all of us that live on planet earth.
At a time when food security will be a huge issue moving forward the Liberals are dismantling the ALR. At a time where our addiction to oil is driving climate change, the Liberals have cynically hamstrung Translink and are doubling down on Motordom with a ridiculously oversized bridge to Delta and now this Sunshine Coast fixed link scheme.
The North Shore is already a parking lot. The Sea to Sky Highway is already becoming congested with the growth of the Squamish region and beyond. This proposed Sunshine Coast highway is only going to be two lanes, with the occasional passing lane. I suggest that this new highway would need to be expanded to 4 lanes almost immediately.
And so while a bridge across Anvil Island could significantly benefit me personally, I am strongly against it on principle and what I believe is the “greater good”. However, I am not under any illusions the Liberals care what I think. If they want to build a bridge to the Sunshine Coast using Anvil as a footing, they will move ahead with their plans. The only group powerful enough to stop it might be the Squamish Nation.
Our planet has limits. We must impose limits on ourselves. We won’t do it. And so the future is dark and bloody. The bridge won’t be built not because the Liberals will decide against it, but because by the time they are ready to do it, our stupidity, greed, and addiction to material comforts will have completely undermined not only the foundations we have built our civilization upon, but more critically, the living planet that nourishes us.
Shame on them, and shame on us.
The only limits are limits of the mind.
Plenty of land in the world that could be used with proper care, both in North America or Africa or SE Asia or Middle East, for example for food or housing. Vast deserts could bloom with irrigation or used for solar plants or housing. Have you ever been to Israel ? Look what they can do in tiny spaces with water and ingenuity. Just one project which is now being implemented in the US is sea water desalination to be used for irrigation and drinking water. http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059994202 or here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Israel
Canada likely will have 100M+ people by about 2100, thus 10M+ in Lower Mainland. See here http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/terence-corcoran-100-million-canadians-we-could-only-hope
All doable. We don’t even dare to build more land in the Fraser River delta though to not upset the birds. We could create dozens of sq km of new land for housing, recreation, retail and industries. Fly north of Vancouver and what do you see: hundreds of kilometers of forests where no one lives. PLENTY of land to be used by people, like in the Alps today where they grow stuff in remote valleys, as they had 2000+ years to develop it.
We need to make the very close by areas accessible for more people, while also protecting some significant parts as nature. Luckily BC has so much land it can do both. Ditto with ALR. Some can be sacrificed as it has low yield, while others are being sacrificed that should not (apparently Tsawwassen Mills lands is one of those). That debate is missing.
And Earth’s other creatures can all just disappear for us. To hell with them.
Are you aware that we have already destroyed 40% of the arable topsoil on the earth? Are you aware of the ongoing drought in California, where most of our produce is grown? Do you know that it was prolonged drought that set the stage for the Syrian Civil war? Have you been to the Alps? (I have and worked there.) The Alps were once an ocean floor. The soil is wonderful. Our local mountains are not even remotely comparable. Not to mention they are in a more favourable latitude for growing hours. Are you aware that industrial fertilizers are petroleum based? Are you aware that fish stocks are forecast to collapse worldwide in 2048? Are you aware of the global political climate and what that might mean for the future?
The notion that we can escape the reckoning that is coming is naive foolishness. The hubris of man is thinking the only limits are in his mind. Gnostic foolishness. Man is trapped in physical body on a physical planet. And he is far from noble. He is savage, selfish and cruel, with only a limited understanding of the consequences of his actions. Buckle up Thomas, the future is ugly. Trump is only the beginning.
Humans are an inventive lot. We will muddle through. Seawater extraction and desalination for large scale fertilization and human consumption at very low cost is here TODAY. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/06/14/413981435/israel-bringing-its-years-of-desalination-experience-to-california
As such, it is easy to make Mexico’s or Africa’s or Syria’s desserts bloom like California’s or Israel if the belief and will is there. Why is South Africa wealthy but neighboring countries are not ? Belief systems matters. Ingenuity matters. Skills matter. Jews have won a lot of nobel prizes. Ever wondered why ?
Africa and Middle East will soon figure it out.
The future is very bright my friend, with or without Trump or Hillary.
I’m always prepared to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope you are right. But history and a realistic assessment of human nature suggest a different outcome. Some of us might “muddle through”, but after millions, probably billions, die.
I recommend Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress”.
Billions die as we have billions of people. Billions of people need fish, meat, eggs, water, dairy, clothing, housing, phones, education, energy etc.. They want what we have: nice homes, cars, iPhones, travel, university education, healthcare, safety, pensions etc. Pretending otherwise is just elitism, like many “green” folks aim for in their blind eco-terrorism that denies billions a better lifestyle by making energy and food artificially & unnecessarily more expensive !
My understanding is that the Anvil Island option would not provide any access to Anvil Island itself, and so it would not benefit you personally in any way. It would, however, create a construction scar on the island and create a lot of traffic noise, which I suspect is the real reason you are opposing this.
At this point the Anvil Island option assumes no direct access. However, given that a bridge would be a fundamental change for the island and we receive nothing but an almost useless annual garbage barge for our taxes, and have no safe moorage, I suspect negotiating a simple U-turn route on the island wouldn’t be a large obstacle given the scope of the project. Further to that, the hike to the Peak has become very popular (it is listed in a well-known local hiking guide) in spite of the fact there is no public access to the island. This has created an awkward situation where hikers are forced to pay a fee and sign a waiver to use the summer camp as an access point, but only when summer camps are not in session, ruling out the two most likely hiking months, July and August. Otherwise they have to trespass on private property to gain access to the trail. I regularly have to help confused hikers find the trailhead when they get lost on our roads. Just think how happy the government would be if they could argue that this bridge would provide recreational access to a fantastic hike to an iconic peak in the Sea to Sky corridor!
Hydro is a different matter. That would require expensive substations on the mainland and on the island, and these things would need to be maintained etc. I suspect you could only negotiate hydro if the property owners collectively agreed to turn the island into subdivision. So I wouldn’t expect hydro to happen.
But to your assumption. As hard as it may be to believe that are still people left on the earth that operate on principle, or for what is the greater good, there are. I do not deny that I am opposed to more traffic noise and a construction scar, however given the location and aspect of my property on the island I would never see the construction scar, nor would it increase traffic noise. The traffic noise that bothers me is on the Sea to Sky highway. In the right conditions the noise travels unobstructed across the water. The highway on the island would have a lot of island and forest between it and me. It would, however, radically affect my neighbours in Fern Bay.