LETTITOR

 

 

 

 

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Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
—Gordon Lightfoot, “Carefree Highway”

Careless highway

Is it just me, or is Greater Vancouver one of the least
well thought out urban areas in North America? The
Other Press has plenty of coverage this week about
how everything’s going to hell in a hand basket
with the problems the Pattullo is causing everyone
and really, it’s no big surprise. In terms of planning
for transportation and growth, Vancouver does an
abysmally poor job of thinking for the future.

After all, one of our primary crossing of the
river that divides the entire region is a 71-year-old
structure that can barely support two lanes’ worth
of traffic (of course it does support two lanes of
traffic, but in such close quarters that a head-on
collision seems only seconds away every time you
cross it) and has supports made of wood coated with
flammable waterproofing agents. On top of that, the
other two crossings are halfway to useless as well
in terms of dealing with volume, and effective rapid
transportation from SkyTrain is only useful if you’re
going to a few select locations outside of Vancouver.

So what’s-to be-done about this sorry situation?
I'd say the solutions lie in thinking more towards the
future, more considerations towards the suburbs and
a rethinking about how we collect and spend our tax
money.

Of the three parts to this equation, thinking
about the future is the trickiest; it’s not because
we can’t think in such a way, it’s because making
decisions with an eye towards the future is tricky
for governments, especially for a right-wing,
laissez-faire government like the B.C. Liberals.
Since the only solution to problems they can think
of are cutting taxes and deregulating the fuck out of
everything and that line of thinking is how they’ve
carved out their base of support, for them to get
involved in just about anything that isn’t immediate
or essential (in their view) makes them vulnerable
to losing support from their base of small-C
conservatives who vote for them every election.

But really, if governments start doing a little more
thinking about how their policies of letting urban
sprawl be the only form of growth in the area, in
particular how urban sprawl puts more demand on
infrastructure, we might not have the transportation
nightmares this city goes through every day at rush
hour.

Of course it’s not fair to put the blame
squarely on Gordon Campbell’s shoulders (after
all, the suburbs east of Coquitlam are responsible
for this too) but only the provincial government
has the resources to make efficient, modern and
environmentally-friendlier transportation and
infrastructure possible. The municipal governments
have a role to play, but they simply don’t have the
capital to provide such infrastructure without help
from above.

These very suburbs—and governments not
stepping in to help them—are the causes for the
major congestion on the road. We keep building
subdivision after subdivision on cheap land east
of Coquitlam (Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows in
particular, the fastest-growing municipalities in
the GVRD) and everyone assumes they’ll be fine
using ancient infrastructure built to handle half
the capacity of what they actually do, and it’s just
ridiculous. The low-density construction in these
communities means that SkyTrain or even light rail
are so impractical because they can’t serve enough
people with a reasonable number of stops or stations.
It’s very convenient for city councils in places like
this to approve every new development that will
bring precious tax dollars and jobs to their towns,
but it might serve them well to consider what the
effects of these developments will be 20 years down
the road (but as we’ve already covered, politicians
don’t like doing that very much, do they?).

The final piece of this puzzle is tax dollars,
which will be necessary for any improvements,
of course. I think the easiest thing to is reconsider
the Carbon Tax, which right now taxes British
Columbians at the pump but apparently we’ll get
it all back in our tax returns. This makes no sense;
why not keep the tax charged at the pump, not
give it back, and spend the money on improving
infrastructure (especially public transportation) so
that we won’t need to spend so much money at the
pump? The bonus on our tax returns is going to be
so pitiful when taken individually, but multiply it by
three million citizens, and there’s a significant chunk
of change towards new projects.

Just a thought.

Your friend in high fidelity,
Liam Britten
Editor-in-Chief

The Other Press

 

 

 

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