One more time in the “you just can’t make this stuff up” department, the Corporation of Delta is again letting people know the tunnel is a disaster waiting to happen and the Province better build a ten lane bridge on the most arable farmland in Canada NOW.
There does not appear to be a lot of balanced analytical reporting on this issue in Delta’s press, and you can completely understand why, if residents do not personally go through the tens of reports and thousands of pages provided. No wonder that they’d think this overbuilt, multi billion dollar behemoth of a bridge is the only answer. As Sandor Gyarmati reports in the Delta Optimist, the Delta Mayor and City Manager stated that “the tunnel poses an unacceptable risk for the travelling public and first responders…They are urging the provincial government to consider the catastrophic implications of a tunnel failure, including the devastating economic impacts to the region.”
What? Of course the failure of the tunnel due to a seismic event is bad for the regional economy-let’s not talk about the fact that the tunnel could be seismically upgraded, and if is such an issue, why is that not being done now? But no, the Corporation of Delta is attempting to keep the Massey Bridge proposal on life support. And the Mayor of Delta relies on some misguided reversed misogyny to make her point, obliquely referring to the Mayors’ Council and Metro Vancouver who nixed this overbuilt bridge on the most ecologically sensitive location in the province by saying “It’s a regional boys club and it’s like there’s nothing you can do. You might as well just go home… It really is, I think, a devastating travesty, for the people and the economy. It’s a political thing,”
And in response to City of Richmond Councillor Carol Day who has been outspoken in asking for a review of this multi-billion dollar bridge proposal on the river delta floodplain, the Delta City Manager stated that Ms. Day is “spreading misinformation, relying on an article from a Popular Mechanics magazine from the 1950s.”
There’s a lot more mudslinging but it is not productive to repeat it. What can be said is that at some point everyone needs to look at mutual interests, not positions. And quite frankly an overbuilt multi-billion dollar bridge in the wrong place is still not being productively evaluated. Let’s get going on a non-biased second look as if accessibility, affordability and livability of this region really matters.
It is very healthy to get multiple views, from multiple angles, at a major multi billion $ project. Delta would obviously benefit from a tunnel or bridge widening, more so than say Burnaby or N Van who also sit on MetroVan’s mayor council on transportation.
A thorough review, with all options on the table is probably a good idea, but it will massively delay anything newly built or even upgraded. Any new project has its degree of naysayers and drawbacks, and the goal is to balance positives and negatives.
When one reads the “Electricity may be the driver caption” of the illustration with a driverless car, one has to give that February 1951 issue of Popular Mechanics credit for incredible prescience. It is telling that the Delta mayor chose to mock it. (Zoom in on the caption and read it. You’ll be impressed.)
Furthermore, where has the mayor been in the long period (over a decade) in which the province has failed to complete the seismic upgrade of the tunnel (the external upgrade) and has expressed no intent to do it for greater safety during the bridge planning and construction?
When all else fails, scare the hell out of ’em. It works, so why stop doing it?
I understand your idealistic objections to car use, and would have wholeheartedly opposed this project in the past. But now with current property market, and raising two young kids, there is no option but to seek shelter in the suburbs.
Have you tried looking for a three bedroom townhouse lately? There is nothing in Vancouver. No daycare, no reasonable family housing. The only options are to leave the province, or deal with an ever worsening commute.
This may be true but 1) you don’t do yourself or anyone else any favours by supporting a bridge designed for SOVs that can only make auto-dependence worse and 2) the is already huge swaths of cheaper suburb that are already served by existing roads bridges and transit.
Concentrating development in established areas will give more positive options than plowing under more farmland in a futile exercise at making the cost of living affordable.
So let’s lobby harder for 3-bedroom multi-family housing everywhere transit goes. Some developers are actually listening, but it takes to to build them and balance their numbers with the proven high demand for two and one bedrooms. Better yet, 3-bedroom single family attached housing throughout the Metro in both expensive and more affordable communities.
If you think you need 1,500 ft2 of open lawn in a land-constrained city to raise kids, then you’ve bought the myth perpetrated by subdivision developers three generations ago. After the kids have flown the coop, then you’re faced with ageing and downsizing.
Society needs to come to grips with the burden of cost of the suburban dream. It’s more affordable all around to build walkable, mixed use communities where all ages are accommodated.
“… takes time to build …”
In theory you’re right. But in practice new developments of say 1500 sq ft 3BR condos are at a minimum now $1.5M and oftenwell over $2M. Thus the only hope for cheaper housing is further out with poor LRT/subway connections as the region failed to invest into them. That leaves the car by default !
Latest example is UEL’s block F, Jericho land, highrises along Granville, densification of west end, Richmond or N Van .. all major major massive condo developments with zero rapid transit connections. ZERO. Buses won’t cut it. As such, people use the car. We should not wait 20-30 years after densification occurs to build subways or LRTs. We have to build them at the same time !!
Building an extensive LRT + tram system beyond the Burrard peninsula (and in some cases on the peninsula complementary to the rapid transit SkyTrain backbone) would be an admirable goal. But the expense wouldn’t be worth it unless the network is accompanied by a land use response, mainly urbanizing the suburbs to a degree to create and place jobs, housing, schools and public amenities closer together. If LRT results in more detached housing on large lots on mountainsides and the carving up of the ALR, it will have been a failure in all respects.
Transit must compete head-to-head with the almighty car in order to meet our climate goals, to increase urban efficacy and to finally bring on the Missing Middle in housing and urbanism in a big way.
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We must have high road tolls AND attractive rapid alternatives, i.e. massive investment into rapid transit to convince people to use their car less. Will this happen the next 10-20 years in MetroVan ? Or will we continue the current policy of merely alienating car use by making it more and more miserable but provide no real alternatives ?
I see transit as a very powerful instrument to affect better quality urbanism, which together with conservation are the best ways to meet the challenges imposed by several external forces now materializing together ’til mid-century and beyond. Their impact will continue to occur no matter who forms whatever government.
What people don’t know is that solid ground is down 1,000 ft and a decision on the type of piles, the cost and the seismic safety has not been determined. It is not known if the “floating piles” in a raft, that appear to be preferred, with soil consolidated around them, are any safer than the tunnel with soil consolidated around it. What people don’t know is that it is not intended to accommodate LRT on the bridge. Richmond Council received this information and more under FOI May 8, the day before the election.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of piles being driven anywhere near 300 metres (1000′).
So preferred is probably irrelevant if it’s not technically feasible to do the alternative.
W-Canada highest building, the StanTec tower in Edmonton, currently being built on fairly soft soil is “only” 75m .. details here http://www.geotechnical.ca/Events/Docs/20170127-WangICE%20District%20Towers%20GeoEng%20GSE%20Presentation.pdf for the geotechies !
Where else are we deeper in Canada ?
Given all the various options, price tags and controversy I gave no doubt this bridge or tunnel will be delayed for years while options are evaluated .. while the bottlenecks continue.
And those bottlenecks could be addressed much more quickly by significant increase in transit through the tunnel. That would bring the plan closer to alignment with the Mayor’s Council vision of improved transit.
Indeed it would but any option will take time to engineer, get public and industry input for, discuss, get funding for .. and buses will not draw the crowds as enthusiastically as an LRT or subway .. so much to discuss & plan .. while traffic worsens and industry and residential housing expands south of Fraser due to lower land prices ..