Port Mann Fiasco

Gridlock is endemic in metro Vancouver.

TransLink has become the “clown of transit planning” and now with with two very expensive vanity projects, the truncated Broadway SkyTrain subway and the Surrey LRT, which is being planned as a “poor man’s” SkyTrain, the clown is turning into a nightmare.

TransLink has had good teachers.

Now, all has become clear. The BC Liberal/ Gordon Campbell masterpiece, the Port Mann Bridge has become a massive financial black hole, sucking in millions of dollars so the BC Liberals could have a vanity project to cut ribbons in front of at the last election.

Cue to the Canada line, another Liberal boondoggle where after $2.5 billion spent, all we have to show for it is the worlds only heavy rail metro, built as a light metro and has less capacity than a simple tram costing a tenth to build! Oh yes, the Canada line is costing TransLink about $110 million per year to operate, three times that of a light rail line of comparable size!

With thanks to Norman Farrell

Since toll revenue at Port Mann has covered only 39% of operating costs, means massive subsidies must be paid; subsidies which monies come from other much needed transit projects in Metro Vancouver, The Fraser Valley and BC!

Political vanity projects are driving the mad dash past the point of no return with congestion in the region and the Massey Tunnel Bridge will be the coup de gras to the regional transportation plan, as inept as it is.

Gridlock in Metro Vancouver will be endemic and the flight of families to more affordable realms are now making current transportation models obsolete.

Within a decade, Metro Vancouver will be almost unlivable due to huge tax increases on inflated property values; extremely expensive transit projects that do nothing in improving congestion; and incompetent municipal governments who kow-tow the BC Liberal’s harebrained vanity project schemes. Metro Vancouver will become the home of the very rich, fat cat bureaucrats, political elites and the very poor, who will live in subsidized housing.

Someone, please tell Delta Mayor Lois Jackson to change her stand supporting the bridge, to demand it not to be built (a complete game changer if she did), but I’m afraid in her declining years she only listens to Victoria now and not common sense.

It is sad to see that the key to metro Vancouver’s livability is held by one who is now past making rational decisions.

Read Norman Farrell’s full blog item

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