How much traffic can a highway, even a shiny new one, possibly handle? I was pondering that question earlier this week after news broke that B.C. Ferries was looking to re-route all Vancouver Island-bound traffic through Tsawwassen. The idea was to shelve the Horseshoe Bay-Nanaimo run in the name of corporate efficiency, meaning an additional million-plus vehicles a year would end up on highways in these parts.
Thankfully the proposal didn't get far as Liberal cabinet ministers, sensing a growing outrage from the public, put an end to it quickly.
Before that happened, however, a troubling school of thought began emerging, one that suggested the new South Fraser Perimeter Road is essentially fair game.
A few years back when the billiondollar highway was still in the planning stage and decisions were being made about its alignment, we were repeatedly told it was, first and foremost, a truck route. Yet now it seems to be so much more, and its existence is being used to justify a pending traffic explosion.
It was argued that access to the Tsawwassen terminal has improved with the opening of the SFPR late last year, yet it's only convenient if you're coming from certain locations and even then every vehicle adds to the congestion.
Should the ferry proposal have come to fruition, that additional traffic would likely have come on stream around the same time the Tsawwassen First Nation's two mega malls open their doors. Throw in TFN's significant industrial and residential projects, which will really start generating traffic over the next few years, as well as development in and around Tsawwassen, including the Southlands, and you're creeping, quite literally, toward carmageddon.
The situation gets even worse if Terminal 2, which would double the number of container berths at Roberts Bank, and double the number of trucks calling on the port, receives government approval as expected.
There's no doubt the addition of the SFPR to the region's highway network helps in that regard, but as far as I can tell, it's still just a four-lane road. And most of these projects will come online before they even break ground on a new bridge.
I certainly applaud B.C. Ferries' efforts to become more cost efficient rather than simply upping fares, but re-routing traffic to Tsawwassen to help solve one problem simply creates another.
There's no doubt the SFPR is a shiny new highway, but there's got to be a limit to how much it can handle.
