Yesterday in the B.C. legislature, B.C. Liberal MLA John Yap and B.C. NDP MLA Bowinn Ma offered alternative views on how to address traffic congestion in the Lower Mainland.

We've reproduced their comments from Hansard because most people don't read transcripts from the debates in Victoria.

But they can offer insights into the different philosophies of various politicians.

You can see what each one of them said underneath their names below.

John Yap

I rise in the House to speak today on the subject of congestion on our roads, which is a major inconvenience for travellers, a safety issue for first responders and a drain on the economy.

Day after day, commuters idle bumper to bumper, not moving and not getting anywhere at the George Massey Tunnel. They're missing medical appointments. They're not getting their kids to soccer practice on time. It's taking them an hour or two to get home from work to be with their family.

Or maybe they are truckers trying to transport goods to market. They've got somewhere to be and a schedule to adhere to. Instead, they're sitting in traffic and letting their employers down — through no fault of their own, of course. What can they do? They're trapped.

This side of the House has been asking the opposite side for a solution to this problem since about a year and a half ago. Back then it was 80,000 commuters a day that were estimated to be stuck in this gridlock. Today that figure is closer to 94,000 commuters a day. The number has grown significantly.

This problem is getting worse. Motorists who use this busy corridor need action. They need a solution. They plead for some movement on this issue. Of course, there was a solution in place to replace the structure, which, by the way, opened in 1959 as the Deas Island Tunnel. It's 2019 now. The Massey Tunnel has served its purpose for 60 years. It's old. It's inefficient. It's seismically unsound. It's unsafe for emergency personnel.

Drivers have had enough. They were told the bridge, the most cost-effective and environmentally sound option to replace the tunnel, was coming. There would be some relief on the horizon. But unfortunately, as we all know, those plans are not in the works any longer. The bridge project is dead.

So what is the plan? We don't know. The government has said it won't make a decision on upgrading or replacing this structure until the fall of 2020, a year and a half from now. I already outlined how much worse congestion has gotten in the past year and a half, so we can only imagine what it will be like by the fall of 2020.

Deferring this issue that far into the future is unacceptable to those living south of the Fraser who grapple with this situation each and every day, and I would argue that this problem affects an even wider swath of people. We know this route links people to our B.C. Ferries system. There are people relying on those ferries for work, travel and leisure.

We have folks trying to travel for business purposes who are being held back by this congestion. We have families trying to visit each other for spring break or summer vacation missing their sailing and missing out on valuable quality time. I mean, what kind of welcome are we giving to visitors to our province who are driving off that ferry in Tsawwassen and into that parking lot of gridlock? It certainly doesn't give the best impression of beautiful British Columbia.

This traffic situation certainly is a major inconvenience for many people. It impacts their quality of life in a number of ways. But most importantly, I want to address the issue of safety.

This tunnel is seismically unsafe. That is a fact. I can't tell you the number of people who've told me that they get nervous every time they have to drive through it. They're hoping that, halfway through the tunnel, an earthquake might not hit. They're hoping someone doesn't ignore the rule prohibiting lane changes through the tunnel and hit them. And God forbid, if they're ever involved in something like that or in close proximity to the tunnel, they are hoping emergency personnel can reach them.

These are all incredibly scary prospects, and that fear is shared by first responders as well. If there is a crash, emergency services often struggle to get in or out of the tunnel. They're also very concerned about potential fires in the tunnel, which aren't out of the realm of possibility with a bad crash. So to tell all these people that they have to just keep waiting for a solution, just be patient a little while longer, doesn't sit well.

To add insult to injury, while they're sitting in that gridlock, they can see that huge pile of sand from the preliminary work on the now scuttled bridge project. There are no workers to be seen. As we know, there could have been 9,000 construction jobs if that project had gone ahead. No shovels in the ground. No heavy machinery. No pieces of equipment. No noise. No activity. Just silence.

The other thing that they're upset about is seeing the funds that are going towards the study of a rapid train between Vancouver and Seattle that would help people travel between those two cities in an hour. My colleague the hon. member for Delta South has even joked that people south of the Fraser might be better off moving to Seattle to take that train to get to downtown Vancouver. But it's no joke. People have waited long enough. It's time to do something here and now to relieve this congestion.

Bowin Ma

I'd like to talk very specifically today about the issue of urban congestion, as I recognize that rural and remote communities face and experience transportation challenges very differently.

The issue of road congestion is really important to my community out on the North Shore. As congestion continues to grow, it impacts residents, commuters, businesses, student services and the quality of life. The member opposite has identified many of these challenges already. But on the North Shore and in many areas of Metro Vancouver, the issue of traffic congestion is intricately connected to other issues like land use and, in particular, housing affordability.

For instance, as housing unaffordability increases, people are moving farther and farther away from where they were and thus spend more and more time in their vehicles on the roads to get to and fro in their daily lives. Increasing commuter traffic forms a huge part of our increasing congestion challenges on the North Shore, and that is actually a perfect example of how this happens.

According to the integrated North Shore transportation planning project, or INSTPP, between 2011 and 2016 the North Shore grew by an additional 2,900 jobs, but its population only increased by about 900 working-age people. So the other 2,000 workers are being imported, for lack of a better term, from elsewhere in the region, and without viable non-car alternatives, commuters often end up back in their cars, adding to the already congested networks that exist.

Certainly, I think we can all agree that congestion has been an ongoing issue for British Columbia and particularly the Lower Mainland, not simply for the last year and ten months or so since the last election.

Now, the thing that's always fascinated me about transportation engineering when I was studying at UBC is that it's an engineering field that is almost entirely reliant on attempting to understand and mathematize human behaviour. Now, a piece of steel behaves in the same predictable fashion over and over and over again, but the same cannot be said about humans. What we do know, however, is that humans make decisions, at least from a transportation perspective, by weighing the pros and cons of a number of factors.

"If I leave at 7:00 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., I'll beat the rush."

"If I take the Port Mann Bridge instead of the Pattullo, I'll avoid the New Westminster traffic."

"If the bus costs me $2.85 and gas, insurance and car payments cost me $10 a trip, it'll be cheaper for me to take the bus. However, the bus takes me 30 minutes longer. So how much is my time worth?"

Time, route and mode—those are three ways that people change their transportation behaviour in order to suit their commuting environments. So when you add lanes to a roadway, when you add lanes to a bridge, you actually end up inviting people to change their time of travel, their travel route and their mode to find the most efficient option, according to their tolerances for each kind of inconvenience.

"Well, actually, traffic isn't too bad at 7:30 a.m. anymore. I'll sleep in another half hour."

"Actually, New Westminster added a few more lanes through the city. I guess I'll take the Pattullo Bridge now."

"Well, actually, maybe driving now saves me an hour over the bus, and I'm willing to pay the extra money that it takes to get back into my car."

Before you know it, the roads are full again.

What we have seen, time and time again, in growing urban areas around the world is that this means we never actually see our roads clear of congestion. It is a concept known as the law of congestion or induced demand, and it is a very well-understood concept amongst those who study urban traffic. It is, unfortunately, also a very difficult concept to communicate to the public and politicians looking to make political gains—quick wins, perhaps. They are trying to make political gains with bad decisions that will take advantage of that misunderstanding by promising monster highways that only ever make things worse.

Brent Toderian, who is an international consultant on advanced urbanism, said that across the world, city builders who understand the complex relationship between land use, car infrastructure and road congestion struggle to communicate it in a simple way that resonates with the public.

It's now well demonstrated in transportation demand management research and practice that you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion by building roads. In fact, the opposite is true. The more freeways and car lanes you build, the more people drive and the more congestion and other negative results there are.

What do we do then? We can't simply allow people to languish in worsening congestion. Instead, we must start to work to build the housing that people can afford.

John Yap

I thank the member opposite for those comments and agree with her closing statement that we can't allow commuters to be languished in gridlock. I think all of us in this House want to do what's best for our constituents.

Constituents in Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Langley, drivers all across the Lower Mainland are being burdened with this congestion problem at the George Massey Tunnel, the worst traffic bottleneck in the entire province of British Columbia. It's travellers using our ferry system. It's people across B.C. and beyond. It's local motorists and commercial truckers, business people and vacationers. The common thread is that their precious time is being utterly wasted in traffic — languished, as the member opposite said. Important appointments are being missed, and quality time with loved ones—evaporated.

All of the studies and information-gathering that needs to be done has been done. The people want action. They want their time back. They want to stop idling and polluting the environment. They want to be reassured about their safety on this stretch of road.

What they don't want is to wait until the fall of 2020 for answers. I fear some people will not wait, people like the CEO of London Drugs, who has said, publicly, that he's considering moving either the head office, the distribution centre or both from Richmond. The massive delays at the tunnel impact about half of their 900 employees who live south of the Fraser. Some of them have quit because they can't handle the terrible commute any longer.

The congestion also hampers the flow of goods to and from London Drugs, which increases their costs to do business. What happens when costs increase? They get passed on to consumers. That's a major company, a major local employer that's considering leaving the area because of this gridlock at the George Massey Tunnel.

I've already noted how at least 9,000 jobs could have been created had the bridge project gone ahead, but now we see that many more jobs could be on the line if employers start uprooting their businesses and moving elsewhere. They need a firm commitment that a solution is coming. They need to know that their contributions to our economy are valued and will be protected.

In closing, I will continue to advocate for this tremendously important tunnel replacement in whatever form it takes to proceed in a timely fashion for the good of British Columbians, our economy and our environment.