Since Gordon has still not called on his Price Tags satellite phone from the remote Australian outback, let’s go ahead and unpack the announcement that the Province has identified six potential new crossings from the North Shore to Vancouver. You can read a bit of the background as well as review the six potential crossing locations in this post.
Gordon wrote a blog post four years ago that any crossing from the North Shore would be for vehicles, because that is who the voting public on the north shore was. He also pointed out that the problem with a vehicular crossing was how it would “land” on the Vancouver side, and where the space would be for that connection and interchange. And in these times we well know what that type of property acquisition would cost.
But times change, and the new Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy is looking at potential new town centers on the North Shore. The three communities on the North Shore house 190,000 people in the Districts of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, and in the City of North Vancouver. Metro Vancouver is tying in with TransLink in the new regional transportation strategy in partnership with the Regional Growth Strategy for 2050, which is now in process.
This updates the Metro Vancouver plan 2040 which was adopted in 2011. The new 2050 plan outlines its mandate as “planning for a future generation”.
If you have travelled during rush hour in the North Shore, you know how frustrating it can be, and there’s been a nine percent increase in commuting according to the 2016 census. What is curious is that nearly 42 percent of people working on the North Shore come from other places in the region.Those statistics are for people with an established location of work, and does not include construction or trades workers.
A study undertaken by the Provincial government in 2014 found that congestion over the Second Narrows Bridge could be directly linked to the demolition and building permits in the three North Shore municipalities. That study includes those construction and trade workers.
Mayor Linda Buchanan of the City of North Vancouver has been leading in conversations about town centres where people can live and work in the same community. If there are new town centers which can provide affordable housing for people, they need to be connected with good transit options. There are also several locations for town centres including Lonsdale, the Park Royal area, and the area north of the Second Narrows Bridge. Of course sustainability and sea rise will also need to be addressed in ascertaining resilient locations.
It’s the idea of new town centres with good transit that ties into some form of rapid transit connecting to the region that is new. This is a gamechanger.
Looking at the six rapid transit options for a crossing there are a few outstanding options.
If the intent is to connect the North Shore with the region, the options of a new/existing bridge/tunnel at the Second Narrows Bridge makes sense. MLA Bowin Ma found out that it may be “technically possible to run a transit line under the existing bridge deck through the bridge’s trusses.”
If the intent is to funnel people to downtown Vancouver, then the First Narrows Bridge (tunnel crossing) or Lonsdale (tunnel crossing) would be the options. The Lonsdale option is also the longest and most technically challenging and would be duplicating the seabus route. It would also be extremely costly.
The next part of the study looks at the technical work required for each potential crossing and winnows down the options to three. I expect that the Burnaby to Lonsdale route with a tie-in to Brentwood and Metrotown on the SkyTrain will be highly favoured. That option connects the North Shore to the region, and to the other growing town centers in Burnaby and elsewhere, as well as providing a rapid transit option straight to the downtown.
The Province will be reporting back on the preferred choices within the next few months.
Images: Wikipedia & CBC
Another factor would be whether the Seabus would be retained, even after a SkyTrain line is built.
If the SkyTrain connects to the region via Second Narrows, the Seabus could remain to connect Lower Lonsdale to Downtown Vancouver.
A Hastings Line turning north across Second Narrows was also proposed in a 1994 BC Transit study mentioned here:
https://orangeraisin.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vancouver-north-shore-transit-options-1994-second-narrows.jpg?w=480&h=256
https://orangeraisin.wordpress.com/2019/12/25/hastings-skytrain-alternate-reality/
Planning for these things takes time, but it seems cruel to be dangling this silver-bullet promise when it is at least 20 years from being built. As much as North Shore residents feel they “deserve” relief for a perceived traffic problem of their own choosing, they are far back in the queue for regional transportation dollars of this magnitude. I’m curious what will happen when they realize this. But only a little. Honestly, we have bigger problems than trying to placate their boomer crankiness.
I realize that this is all about high capacity rapid transit. But I’ve always felt that we have sadly neglected the true potential offered by a properly developed Seabus or companion ferry network. A few years ago I interviewed state of the art hull designer Scott Jutson, who moved here from Sydney a while back. He was working on a protoype 50-passenger electric ferry to link West Vancouver with downtown. A similar design is already in operation in Juneau, Alaska. Here’s what he said for a piece in Montecristo:
Jutson says it’s past time we addressed our chronic congestion problem—and cites our ocean-side setting as part of an obvious solution now being ignored.
“Unlike cities like London, New York, San Francisco and Auckland, Vancouver stands out in its lack of water utilization as a transport link,” says the designer, who notes Seabus taps only a small part of the potential.
“I’d love to see a ferry cutting across the harbour. Even more so if it’s clean and electric.”
Jutson estimates the cost of such a ferry to be around $1 million, which he notes, in mass transit terms, is not a lot of money.
“We have docks everywhere: the city owns a dock in Harbour Green which is just sitting there unused. These kinds of ferries are not a big deal. They can be a small but efficient part of the solution.”
Indeed. If Sydney is the model there’s no reason why we couldn’t have larger vessels (SeaBus size) running further up the inlet or to West Van, for that matter. Just like there used to be. Ferries could be a highly flexible part of the plan.
Indeed. I used these ferries a lot when I was in Sydney about 2 years ago. Very fast. Very efficient. We could easily serve UBC to Port Moody, Horseshoe Bay to New Westminster, and all points in between (like downtown, N Van, Burnaby, False Creek) with faster ferries, 5-8 routes and 30+ stops. Far cheaper than rail indeed.
Keep in mind the weather is better though in Sydney.
Yes, for sure. Right off the plane my cure for jet-lag started with a quick trip to Manly for lunch. Many of our main centres have water access. I agree it’s likely not that feasible for open ocean routes but, as you note, we do have plenty of more sheltered, closer to shore options that could work for most of the year. If / when we start charging for the real carbon cost of one person vehicle occupancy these kinds of options will look much more appealing and realistic.
Game changer or more of the same?
These rapid transit route speculations and possible new dense cities on the north shore even if they are walkable mixed use high employment centres and served by rapid transit will still be unaffordable and unit ownership impossible for many in the population seeking housing. The regional growth strategy has not solved the affordability issue, the commuter / worker / rolling business congestion issue, and the consequential environmental issues of the strategy. Rapid transit mostly serves one segment of the traveling public, the ones with nothing much to carry but brief cases and bags. Even if all the brief cases and bags travelled by rapid transit, the north shore road network would likely still be congested with locals doing tasks and on-the-road businesses driving every which way.
More transit infrastructure? Where? More Seabus runs? A larger fleet? More north shore destinations? More passengers for Waterfront Station?
Doing tasks? Many of which could be done walking or cycling in dense mixed-use neighbourhoods. On the road businesses? I do quite a bit of work on the North Shore and transit is my go-to. I’ll ride my bike sometimes and drive occasionally – if it’s a really awkward location – but just doing business isn’t an excuse.
Rather than pure speculation, I’d like to see some real number-crunching about how many cars would come off the road if all the brief cases and bags took transit. I’d bet it would be a lot more than you think. People love other peoples’ excuses for why they need to drive.
As long as road & bridge use is free AND public transit in’t systematically improved (eg faster rail to downtown and places further afield) it will be very minor. Only once public transit is faster than using a car will people switch. LG or 2nd Narrows bridge at $10 toll at rush hour would make an impact, of course, too, but is this politically doable?