Matthew Ramsey
Sun
A contentious plan to widen Highway 1 between Vancouver and Langley and to twin the Port Mann Bridge will be accelerated, Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon says.
Falcon told The Province that consultation on the estimated $800-million project will begin this fall with the hope it will be finished by 2010.
Highway 1 would become an eight-lane freeway between 1st Avenue in Vancouver and 200th Street in Langley under the plan.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” Falcon said.
He pointed to a federal study that showed the Port Mann Bridge will be clogged by rush-hour intensity traffic for 18 hours a day within the next five years.
“We’ve got to think about what the reality of population growth will mean to traffic congestion,” Falcon said.
He said traffic congestion costs the B.C. economy about $1.5 billion each year.
When the plan was first announced in June it was blasted by environmental groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation as one that does nothing to reduce air pollution.
In late July, the Greater Vancouver Regional District voted to ask the government to ease back on the plan until a full environmental assessment was done.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan noted that the GVRD’s Livable Region Strategy runs contrary to the highway expansion plan by calling for a reduction in the amount of development in the Fraser Valley and an increase in development in areas, or “nodes,” served by public transit.
Those two measures would better address burgeoning traffic issues from the Fraser Valley to Vancouver than building a bigger Highway 1, he said.
“I’m disappointed,” said Corrigan. “I think we should be working together. This is likely going to bring a lot more traffic into the cities . . . these decisions should not be made on the back of a matchbox cover.”
Falcon admitted “you cannot build your way out of congestion completely,” but said the government’s support of the RAV line and other public-transit expansions indicates the provincial commitment to a multi-pronged approach to reducing congestion.
As for the objections of mayors such as Corrigan, New Westminster Mayor Wayne Wright and Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who has called the plan “ludicrous,” Falcon said the provincial government will hear all of their concerns as consultation gets under way later this fall.
“I will certainly work as hard as I can to build as much consensus as I can,” he said.
Local government supporters of the proposal include Langley Township Mayor Kurt Alberts.
HIGHWAY 1 NUMBERS
– Traffic on Highway 1 at 200th Street in Langley increased by 13 per cent between 1996 and 2003 to 85,000 vehicles a day.
– 127,000 vehicles a day crossed the Port Mann Bridge in 2003, up from 77,000 in 1985.
– 32 per cent of westbound vehicles exit at Cape Horn, 19 per cent go into Vancouver, and 6.5 per cent go over the Ironworker’s Memorial (Second Narrows) Bridge.
Source: Greater Vancouver
Transportation Authority
© The Vancouver Province 2004