In the “give your head a shake” department The CBC reports that that the Massey Bridge is a done deal. Imagine-the Provincial government has granted an environmental assessment certificate for this multi billion dollar ten lane beast that will eat up the most arable soils in Canada, pile drive in the sensitive Fraser River, and generally create a 20th century heap of motordom and tolled vehicular infrastructure that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s overbuilt, and not worth the irreparable environmental damage.
This is one of the decisions that in fifty years will be seen as a major mistake-a multi billion dollar one. But this government is bent on creating access for Delta port trucking, and fast drives for consumers to the Tsawwassen Mills shopping mall-the latter which is as empty as a spent beer can on a Friday night. The demise of this mall will just provide more places for the port to park their cargo trucks, and we can weep at the loss of this major migratory bird flyway, and the short sightedness of paving agricultural lands.
But here’s the Province’s messaging:
“The approval comes with 33 conditions that are legally binding requirements that the Transportation Ministry must meet. The government says the key findings that helped the approval included that no significant adverse effects were likely to occur on fish and fish habitat and that the project would eliminate congestion delays and idling on the route between Richmond and Delta.
The construction will also mean replacing the interchanges of Westminster Highway, Steveston Highway and Highway 17A. The project will require various federal, provincial and local government permits to go ahead and the Environmental Assessment Office will work with other government agencies to ensure conditions are met. Construction of the new bridge is expected to start this year with completion by 2022.”
You’ve seen the end of the region as we know it.
This is not the only dumb deal . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc . . . somewhere in the not too distant past we really went off the rails!
Totally disgusting! Now the beautiful scenery will look like Houston or most any other large urban area.
Don’t give up. There are a number of ways this boondoggle can be reversed.
#1 is the NDP could win the next election. The contracts won’t be signed until well after the election, and the NDP has pledged to respect the near-unanimous decision of the Metro Vancouver Regional District:
John Horgan’s statement on the Massey Bridge boondoggle on Simi Sara Show
https://omny.fm/shows/the-simi-sara-show/ndp-commits-to-funding-40-of-major-transit-project?t=4m20s
The regional Mayors’ Council on transportation has prepared its case to the federal government in a quest for a chunk of the $16.6 billion in funding in Ottawa’s Public Transit Infrastructure Fund.
Guest: John Horgan – Leader of the BC NDP
Starts at 4:20
Simi Sara: “Would you continue with the Massey Tunnel replacement project?”
John Horgan: “I think the Massey Tunnel replacement project is a Christy Clark project. It’s a vanity project that she put on the table. It is not a priority for the region. It is not a priority for the local mayors . . . except one mayor from Delta. So I believe that the priority list should be set by the people who are going to put this plan together, and that’s the Mayors’ Council.”
Simi Sara “So is that a no? You wouldn’t move forward with that if you were elected?”
John Horgan: “It’s not a priority for the mayors; it’s not a priority for me.”
Deleted as per editorial policy. Please review.
You do love your alternative facts, don’t you Thomas?
BC debt in 2001 (NDP): $44.5B (adjusted for inflation)
BC debt in 2016 (Liberal): $66.4B
Total BC Liberal debt increase: ~$22 billion in 15 years.
A 1% rise in interest rates will add $10M of additional interest payments to each billion increase in debt.
In addition, the weighted debt to GDP ratio from 1981-2013 was:
NDP: 13.9
Liberals /Socreds: 16.2
Source: Sauder School of Business
Let the readers decide if your opinion is misinformed or not.
Note that BC Hydro jumped in debt by $8.1B since 2008 for a total of $18.1B. It’s expected to climb soon by another $4B as the first installment on Site C, which is expected now to cost $11B (that number just keeps rising). This for a dam originally slated to power LNG, but resulting from the perfectly predictable world market downturn it is now being dangled on a hook to Alberta via a new northern transmission line paid for by the feds. So far no bites from either. And the ratepayers (us) will just have to soak up the cost.
I have shown this article to Thomas on at least one occasion, but I guess he prefers biased opinion to facts.
http://news.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NDP-vs-Liberal-Performance.pdf
Indeed. It’s kinda like a whack-a-mole contest. Rebut an uninformed opinion one time, and up he pops with the same opinion another time.
CREATIVE accounting. The Liberal use of P3s for infrastructure pretends that the debt to finance it is a lease .. Call it a lease or call it debt either way it is paid for by the taxpayer.
The Port Mann was slated to be a P3, but the private consortium pulled out because of financing issues after the Great Recession of 2008-09. As the result it became a straight publicly-financed project that may have saved a significant amount of interest because of the superior AAA credit rating of governments.
Still, at over $6B for the PM and all associated freeway construction, that’s a lot of taxpayer-suported debt. We need to keep in mind that the tolls only cover the capital construction and the private management costs (TREO), not the permanent forever-and-a-day maintenance, depreciation and replacement costs.
There were much less expensive alternatives to a complete replacement proposed at the time, but Gordon Campbell and Kevin Falcon were too enamoured with the private consortium party donor that proposed the testosterone-saturated monster we have today. The old bridge could have received seismic upgrading with several new approach and merge lanes for transit and commercial vehicles, and would have cost a fraction of today’s bridge and saved us 5% on the overall BC debt.
Many larger cities in the world thrive with less road space, namely because they are much better managed than the province could ever imagine and have a well-diversified transportation system where public transit plays a much more important role.
Author
Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Sadly there’s not a snowballs’ chance in hell that the NDP will defeat Clarke, something that both she and Horgan know very well. This monstrous thing is going ahead no matter what people want.
Off course, if the Greens form the next government…
Well Sandy James Planner… I don’t agree with you one bit! If you and others like you had your way, we’d be back in the horse and buggy days. I don’t understand what you folks have against the rest of us being able to get around. What is so wrong with that? Aren’t we able to move about? You obviously have never lived south of that tunnel and had to face the gridlock every morning and night as I have since 1978. This bridge is needed. It is welcomed by many commuters – you know, those of us who work.
I wonder what this wanker does for a living. What makes them so irreplaceable that they have to pollute our world; invade our commons; demand that we enable them to have their ticky tacky south of the Fraser by paying for monstrously expensive infrastructure. Don’t be a slitty-eyed commuter. Get a job where you live.
It was YOUR choice to live south of the tunnel . YOU choose to drive instead of transit. That is no reason for the rest of us to subsidise another money losing bridge.
In all fairness transit is also subsidised.
In our modern mobile society with often both primary family members working, it is not unusual for individual members of a household to work on different sides of any bridge, or the tunnel.
It would be silly to say that one person should not work because of their tunnel commute, or to say that they must find work in one area only. Many professions, social services employees and trades people find themselves sent or called to different places as the work moves around.
Of course transit is subsidized. And it should remain so as long as autotopia is subsidized orders of magnitude more.
Motorists subsidize transit through the massive gas tax, that goes straight to transit but transit tickets do not subside roadways, even though buses ride on roads.
The gas tax does not go straight to transit. It covers roads with some transit. Drivers do not pay for the ongoing maintenance, healthcare, emergency services, litigation and environmental remediation costs they impose on society. All taxpayers at all levels do. Transit poses a net benefit and savings to society through greater urban efficacy, land use efficiency and environmental + health benefits, and it recovers half its operating costs in Metro Vancouver.
This has been studied to death under real world conditions, and decades of information on this topic is there in the public record for all to see.
Taxes are paid to pay for, i.e. subsidize goods and services acquired with these taxes. Are sidewalks not subsidized ? Are life guards and beach cleaunup not subsidized too ? Schools ? Hospitals ? Why not tunnels ?
The Trudeau Liberals just gave Bombardier hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to partly fund their next-generation business jet airplane. Life goes on.
Bombardier is a world-leader in trains. Too bad the moment overtook the future on this one.
Yes they build trains too. And Skidoos and airplanes. Unlike the evil tar sands apparently those are not gradually phased out. Has it occurred to politicians that oil producers and oil users are connected ? Ie no supply if there wasn’t demand. The e-truck, e-ship, e-plane and even mass e-car is a long LONG way off. Even the no-brainer e-underground-train to UBC is apparently a long way off.
I’ve gone through the tunnel many times and I can’t remember ever being stuck in traffic. Maybe it has something to do with taking the bus, taking the bike shuttle or being in a car with more than one occupant – all of which have priority access. It is the SOV’s that are causing the congestion. Why should I have to subsidize their commute choice?
I was stuck once ion the freeway north of the tunnel by a truck accident. The tunnel and freeway are joined at the hip, and there are no commercial or transit queue-jumping lanes.
@ freewaydriver
It’s one thing to have an intelligent discussion on ideas. Quite another to cast insulting aspersions on the employment experience of readers / commenters here, which BTW include several Massey supporters including a commercial contractor.
I for one promise to not respond in kind and cast aspersions on your educational level.
Even the moniker this wanker chooses is telling: ‘freewaydriver’. It’s not freakin’ free. It costs a fortune. Freewaywanker wants it but doesn’t want to pay for it. And the self-important attitude: ‘you know, those of us who work’ – seriously, what do you do for a living. I bet it’s stupid. Spit it out. What do you do for a living that can’t be done by an orangutan?
And let’s please stop talking about moving ‘goods’ and stick with the term ‘stuff’ – one of the worst being bottled water. This lunacy should be taxed out of existence. Crappa Cola making a fortune selling inferior water to rubes – benefitting from our infrastructure. It’s ludicrous. Offensive.
No one is forced to buy bottled water, especially where clean water exists out of a tap, like BC. Yet, people do. So please don’t blame the oil companies, the bottled water companies or Coca Cola for supplying what the customer demands and is willing to pay for it.
But yes, our packaging, such as plastic wrappers, plastic bottles, chewing gum or compound material outght to be taxed far higher and given to cities for their landfill/recycling management. We do not cost life cycle costs enough. As such we ought to at least raise PST and GST and lower income taxes in lieu.