Editor:
Re: Brad Sherwin community comment (Optimist, April 4)
Please, no more anti-tunnel nonsense and for the pylons on the 99. Good drivers have no problems dealing with it.
It has been proven that adding more traffic lanes just increases traffic and congestion ultimately worse than it originally was.
The real issue is the complete failure of TransLink to provide a user-friendly transit service for South of the Fraser. This failure can be traced to our SkyTrain light-metro system and the adherence by the provincial government (of all political stripes), Metro Vancouver, TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit, to an obsolete public transit philosophy based on rapid transit and densification. The province and metro cities build extremely expensive rapid transit lines designed to drive up property values, which in turn drives up taxes, rents, leases and ultimately creates far more problems than it solves.
The taxpayer spending over $11 billion to both extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km and to increase capacity on only the Expo Line.
The world has long moved on from light-metro, in favour of modern light rail which is designed to move people not property values, is cheaper to build and operate, and ultimately has a higher capacity.
Not one transit agency anywhere has copied Metro Vancouver’s exclusive light-metro planning or its use of a proprietary light-metro system, as used on the Expo and Millennium Lines.
The Canada Line is another hugely expensive bag of worms and remains the only heavy-rail metro in the world, built as a light-metro, with less capacity than a modern streetcar or tram costing a fraction to build.
The real problem is not the tunnel, but transportation infrastructure, road and rail projects, built to meet political agendas at election time, leaving the taxpayer with hugely expensive prestige projects, which later turn out to be taxpayer ‘white elephants’, with the car left being the only real option for people to travel.
Malcolm Johnston
