Editor:
Ingrid Abbott’s (Community Comment, Optimist, Dec. 15) tome on the perils of the new tunnel construction is akin to a Hollywood disaster movie, long on tak and short on fact.
She goes on about pile driving and vibrations, yet the new tunnel will be built somewhat like the old tunnel, with a trench dredged on the bottom of the Fraser River, with prebuilt “tunnel” sections or caissons floated in place and sunk into the trench.
Not much pile driving here.
Now the proposed bridge as advocated by our local MLA, would need deep foundations to hold the supports for the ramps leading to the bridge span and extremely deep foundations, several hundreds of metres deep, to support the two massive concrete towers.
Lots of pile driving here!
Of course there will be future traffic disruptions with the tunnel, but the same would be true with the bridge.
Memo to Ms. Abbott: the next time you want to write about the perils of the new tunnel construction, talk to a real expert on the subject, like I do, and not nameless friends, whose knowledge of major engineering is sketchy, at best.
Malcolm Johnston
