Premier Launches Gateway Transportation Program

January 31, 2006

Premier Gordon Campbell unveiled a comprehensive $3-billion plan to open up the province's transportation network today in Vancouver. The plan includes a new Pitt River Bridge, the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, including the largest investment in cycling infrastructure in the province's history and expansion of public transit across the Port Mann Bridge for the first time since 1986, and a new South Fraser bypass route from Delta Port to Highway 1 in Surrey.

"Our existing bridges and highways in the Lower Mainland are well beyond their designed capacities," said Campbell. "The Port Mann Bridge is now congested for 13 hours a day and, on a bad day, it can take two hours to get from Burnaby to Langley. Truck traffic is being forced onto residential streets in Delta and Surrey that were never designed to carry them. Volume on the Pitt River Bridge has tripled over the last 15 years. We know improvements are needed and we need to take action now."

Key elements of the Gateway Program include:

  • The North Fraser Perimeter Road, including the new six-lane Pitt River Bridge connecting Maple Ridge and New Westminster;
  • The South Fraser Perimeter Road connecting Delta Port with the Golden Ears Bridge and Highway 1 in Surrey;
  • Twinning the Port Mann Bridge, allowing for the re-introduction of transit service and including the potential for future light rail transit;
  • Widening Highway 1 from Vancouver to Langley, including extension of HOV lanes into the Fraser Valley; and,
  • A $50-million investment in cycling infrastructure – the largest in the history of the province.

Why is the Gateway Program needed?

Congestion:

  • Transport Canada estimates the economic impact of congestion on all traffic in the region is up to $1.5 billion per year, with the rising costs of delivering goods and services eventually passed on to consumers.
  • Commuting times have increased by 30 per cent in the past 10 years.
  • The BC Trucking Association estimates that goods movers are stopped or slowed in Lower Mainland traffic 75 per cent of the time, and approximates the current cost of congestion to goods movers at $500 million per year.
  • There has been no significant increase in major road capacity in the region since the completion of the Alex Fraser Bridge in 1986.

Growth:

  • The four-lane Port Mann Bridge was built in 1964 when the population of Greater Vancouver was 800,000. Today, the population of Greater Vancouver is 2.1 million.
  • There has been no significant increase in major road and goods movement capacity since the completion of the Alex Fraser Bridge in 1986.
  • The Port Mann Bridge has the highest daily traffic volumes per lane among all the major water crossings in the Lower Mainland, carrying more than 120,000 vehicles a day, including 10,000 transport trucks.
  • The Port Mann Bridge's daily traffic volume is higher than that of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
  • Traffic volume on the Pitt River Bridge has nearly tripled since 1985, and this bridge is congested for most of the day.
  • The population of the Lower Mainland is projected to grow by another 900,000 over the next 25 years – that's the equivalent of almost the entire population of Nova Scotia.

Changing Travel Patterns:

  • The growth in Vancouver residents working in other Greater Vancouver municipalities exceeded the growth in other GVRD residents working in Vancouver by a factor of nine to one.
  • Job creation has become more dispersed than anticipated. In the last 10 years, only seven per cent of new office jobs have been based in regional town centers efficiently served by transit, while almost 50 per cent have gone into suburban office parks, located primarily in Burnaby, New Westminster and Richmond.
  • Over the long term, the greatest projected population growth is expected in Richmond, the Northeast Sector, Surrey, Northwest Langley and Abbotsford.

Economy:

  • Gateway facilities now account for 75,000 jobs and $10 billion in business output annually in Greater Vancouver alone.
  • Approximately 50 per cent of containerized goods are currently transported to and from Greater Vancouver’s terminals by truck; the other 50 per cent move by rail.
  • Employment in Greater Vancouver is expected to increase by about 500,000 jobs by 2031.

More information on the Gateway Program, downloadable copies of the program definition report, a schedule of public consultations, artist renderings, graphics and maps are available online at www.gatewayprogram.bc.ca.