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NDP opposition to twinning Port Mann Bridge is off track
The Province
Published: Sunday, September 30, 2007It is hard to imagine a more scatterbrained approach to transportation policy than the position taken by NDP leader Carole James on the provincial government's Gateway Project.
To the apparent astonishment of even her own caucus colleagues, James has declared her opposition to the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, perhaps the largest single bottleneck for commuter traffic in Metro Vancouver.
Instead, James wants an increase in public transit -- an absurdly illogical demand given that the bridge has been too congested for years even to consider adding buses to the chaos.
It is all very well for environmentalists to advocate "perfect-world" scenarios in which the working masses are forced to abandon private vehicles in favour of public transit.
But the reality is that for thousands of hard-working Lower Mainlanders there is not now, nor is there likely to be in the near future, any reasonable alternative to using their cars to get to work.
It only adds to the apparent confusion in James' mind that she acknowledges there will be a need for a new bridge in the future, "but not now."
If not now, when?
As it is, the bridge will not be completed until 2013, guaranteeing six more years of fumes and frustration for drivers caught in the traffic.
James calls the Gateway scheme "dumb" and "dumber." We believe the description more accurately fits her own ill-conceived policies.
