How long will the netting that is designed to catch falling concrete hold before a chunk of the decaying George Massey Tunnel lands on your car? When will the next car fire in the tunnel become a safety issue because there is no water access for first responders? These are questions that engineers have asked and answered.
Even if it were feasible to retrofit the tunnel to comply with seismic safety standards, what would happen to the 80,000 vehicle trips that currently pass through it daily during construction? A mess of epic proportions is what would happen.
We keep hearing about tunnels in Holland and elsewhere that have stood the test of time. That is great but they are not in sensitive seismic areas.
Richmond council's decision to advise the NDP minority government to stop construction of the bridge does by no means guarantee this will be the case but only serves to remind us how politics can affect outcomes relating to public benefit.
Listening to Mayor Malcom Brodie on the radio the other morning was a surreal experience. It was as if he was unaware of the whole decision making process within the Ministry of Transportation.
Re-analyzing crossing options will only further delay a solution that has already been determined. Additionally, their solution supports infrastructure replacement that does not meet current codes that are applied in Canada.
For his part, Premier John Horgan should attend a face-toface meeting with Richmond and Delta and make his own conclusions. If he and his government have any political will they will make the call to continue with the bridge.
It would be hard to believe that Metro Vancouver voters who, for the most part, brought in the new government, are all antireplacement proponents. Rather, as polling has suggested, they are in support of a new crossing and, in particular, a bridge.
When the Socred government came back in the mid-1970s it did not repeal the Agricultural Land Reserve initiated by Dave Barret and the NDP. Instead, it said, "Hey, this can work if we make it work." That same mentality should be in place here.
There is no need to scrap everything and start over again. If successive governments took this tact on major infrastructure projects, nothing would ever get done and we would all suffer economically and socially.
It is abundantly clear that further updates to the tunnel are not in the cards. A twinning option as Richmond suggests is just plain silly and it would appear that a bridge is the preferred option as determined by experts.
As to cost, the $3.5-billion bridge price tag has been touted as actually $8 billion by Mike Harcourt and now $12 billion by Community Comment colleague Nicholas Wong. Wong cites finance and interest charges to determine this price but oddly does not mention them in a new tunnel replacement that would be more expensive and environmentally harmful.
We are lucky that our newly elected MLA Ian Paton has a firm understanding of the bridge choice and the implications for agricultural land in both Richmond and Delta. Paton is far from a political rookie and I trust him and his Liberal caucus colleagues to hold the NDP to task on this one.
Mike Schneider is founder of Project Pickle and likes to write about growing, cooking and eating food. He is a Jamie Oliver Food Revolution ambassador.
