No Planning on Port Mann Reconstruction

(Aired on August 17, 2010)

If you're looking for a nice place to visit, make sure it's not Vancouver.

Traffic congestion in Vancouver right now is about as bad as it's ever been, and rush hour traffic doesn't end. I went down a couple of times in the early summer, and found the usual hassles where they're building the new approaches to the Port Mann bridge. But when I went down last week, where before traffic started flowing again as you headed down the hill to go over the bridge, this time the construction and wall to wall traffic extended right down to 1st Avenue. Originally I thought that there might have been an accident, but no, it's the way it's apparently going to be for a while.

And if you were a tourist heading to see the sights of what is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, you probably wouldn't have had a very good impression. We don't do a very good job of providing alternate traffic routes when we do construction. It seems to be one of the low priorities when construction projects are assigned. We just sort of say OK we're doing this and the devil be damned. I understand the new Port Mann bridge will alleviate many traffic concerns when it's completed, but that's not until 2013, and to go through that hassle for the next 3 years at least is absolutely deplorable.

I don't understand why we don't get a handle on these problems and do them in such a way that projects are phased in, and one project is done before another is started. We knew there were traffic problems getting into Vancouver 20 years ago, but we've only just now started to deal with them. For those who don't know Vancouver well, I won't bore you with the details, but it's like the government just decided to do everything at once and damn the torpedoes. Planning seems to be a non-existent word in the government's vocabulary, and herein lies a perfect example. I'm just
thankful I don't have to make that trip very often.