Vancouver and area: once so beautiful ,now destroyed by too many automobiles.  

Carole James has taken the right position. This is not a Vancouver regional project, but part of the Trans Canada Hwy. It’s unfortunate that neither transit nor highways project are subjected to a comprehensive and independent benefit-cost evaluation, but this is the way the public’s business has always been done in BC. In the distant past, it may have been because WAC Bennett didn’t like experts, but in today’s world it’s largely because neither pro- nor con- lobbies on any of the issues where such analyses would be indicated, from run-of-the-river energy to transportation links, have any interest in seeing estimates which might undermine their position.

Volumes right now at Port Mann are about 120,000 to 130,000 vehicles per day, roughly similar to what you get on the Deerfoot Trail in Calgary. But compare that to the 400 to 500 thousand vehicles a day on parts of the 401 in Toronto, and you can easily see that the notion that we already have, at five lanes, sufficient capacity at Port Mann for all future needs is ridiculous and untenable.

Traffic does not expand magically to fill available road capacity, and both Bill and Stephen Rees know that. Any credible analysis of induced demand would suggest that at most, about 10% to 60% (notice the wide range of estimates) of additional capacity is filled up by traffic attracted by the shorter travel times offered by expanding a previously congested link. A median estimate would be about one third of the capacity being soaked up by induced demand, much of which is traffic taken off of other roads and streets.

Traffic will, however, expand inevitably given the expected growth in regional population and employment. These additional trip will made by people and producing firms to accomplish economic or social objectives that they consider to be worthwhile, to be worth the cost.

If the critics of the Port Mann project really had even the slightest intention whatsoever of improving transit to the suburbs, perhaps one or the other of the Rees's could explain to Matt Burrows or yourself Charlie why improvements to the West Coast Express, or a comparable commuter rail service on the south side of the Fraser along the CN tracks to Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack is never mentioned by any of them. Come to that, why not commuter rail services along the CN tracks to Squamish and Whistler which could also carry recreational traffic? Why not a commuter rail service along the Arbutus line, and on to Richmond, Delta, White Rock and Bellingham?

Part of the answer can be found in Eric Doherty's essay for SPEC on transit alternatives to highways, where he rejects commuter rail as promoting urban sprawl. Doherty's view is that if people are driving 5 kms to a park and ride to board a train for a 50 km trip, ... well, folks, there's just way too much driving going on! Some people think, or say they think, that this kind of thing is serious stuff.

But to anyone like myself who's seen transit services in the NE sector come and go (does anyone remember the Pacific Coach lines, privatized by Bill Bennett as part of the 1983 "restraint" putsch?) it's pretty clear what the real intention is, what the real game is: to deny the suburbs any transportation facility, be it either freeways or commuter rail, which would actually work for them. Once those political denials are issued, thinly camouflaged behind bits of green and urbanist rhetoric, all the transit and highways dollars can be poured into gold-plated underground lines along Cambie and out to UBC, which oddly carry lower speed rolling stock despite the substantial expense of their tunnels and/or elevated guideways.

Rod Smelser  

Carole James is dead, as dead as a Norwegian Blue Parrot! Can the NDP dump this twit before the next election? If they can, they will give Campbell a nasty surprise!

As for regional transportation, the one transit mode that has a proven record in attracting the motorist from the car, the one mode that can be adorably built serving major destinations and where people live has been ignored and that is modern light-rail.

Commuter trains and SkyTrain are both obsolete transit modes, operating with extremely dated public transport philosophy. Because SkyTrain is so, so expensive to build that it has spawned the Gateway highways and bridge program and commuter rail is so inflexible it is next to useless.

Unless the region wakes and faces its transportation woes with honesty and do diligence all will be lost, except the high taxes needed to fund a gold-plated, over built, and dated transit system. Carole James is like a dead person walking - a NDP corpse awaiting a death blow in May!

Carole James, you have lead the NDP far too long for what good you have done; depart I say, in the name of God go!

(apologies to Oliver Cromwell)  

"Commuter trains and SkyTrain are both obsolete transit modes, operating with extremely dated public transport philosophy. ... commuter rail is so inflexible it is next to useless"


I disagree, Grumpy. I use the West Coast Express daily at a cost of $180 per month. With more track time I don't understand why it couldn't operate in both directions, 18 hours per day, as does the principal GO train line in Ontario, which extends from Oshawa in the east to just outside Hamilton in the west.

http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/schedule/lstserdt.aspx?table=10&s...

Translink said over a year ago that they were going to do a study of the long term picture for the WCE, but as far as I know, nothing has happened. Many of the trains are full, but no more cars are on order, nor any more track time. No one has ever done or even suggested a study on how travel times might possibly be shortened with various track improvements.

I believe there is a powerful bias against heavy rail among politicians and planners in the Lower Mainland, similar to that expressed by Eric Doherty. Any system which offers even reasonably quick travel over longer distances (READ: Fraser Valley to downtown Vancouver) is seen as running contrary to the "livable region" philosophy that people must be "encouraged" to live close to work, and that congestion and travel time delays can be used creatively to help out with that encouragement. While I don't like the policy, I have a grudging respect for its promoters use of elegant-sounding euphemisms. The policy may not be world-class, but the propaganda surely is.

Rod Smelser