Rob's Ramblings

With the recent announcement of a 10 lane monster bridge here in Vancouver it might be timely to examine the idea of the efficient car.  Some supporters of the highway expansion project claim that we don't need to worry about greenhouse gas emissions or local pollution because the increased traffic will sometime in an unspecified future be replaced by magical super efficient cars. A recent article in The Progressive, The Myth of the Efficient Car , examines this issue. The article points out that, "...the looming catastrophe of global pollution, including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars – efficient or otherwise." Meanwhile the private partner involved in building the bridge, Macquaire Group, is having problems .

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon claims the we need to expand the Port Mann to accommodate “commercial-goods–movement” ( Jan 24 Georgia Straight ). But according to his own department's figures, only 8% of the traffic on the bridge is truck traffic . Clearly the current bridge has plenty of capacity for commercial-goods-movement. The vast majority of the traffic on the bridge is single occupancy vehicles and these drivers need to be given the option of transit now, not years in the future. Falcon does get one thing right - tolls will help induce people to take transit. But we need to start congestion pricing on the current infrastructure not future infrastructure. That is what other cities that are taking sustainable transportation seriously are doing. Why is Metro Vancouver falling behind? Powered by ScribeFire .

Apologists for the Gateway Program appear to be re-writing history and claiming that Translink had no plans to run transit over the Port Mann bridge. In actual fact a transit route with queue jumpers was originally planned to be implemented in 2004-2005 (see page 93 of Tanslink's South of Fraser - Area Transit Plan, Final Report - June 2000 : http://www.translink.bc.ca/files/pdf/plan_proj/area_plans/south_fr_final.pdf) Later it appears this was changed to 2007 (see page A8 of Three Year (2005 - 2007) Implementation & Financial Strategy - December 2004 :http://www.translink.bc.ca/files/pdf/plan_proj/ThreeYr05-07Strategic.pdf ) The two maps below produced by a third party illustrate the plans outlined in the documents referenced above. The Port Mann bus route is shown in red. The 2000 Transit plan had the route stopping at central Surrey - this map extends that route. The queue jumper lanes. Update: This project is also mentioned in the "KEEPING GREATER VANCOUVER MOVING...