Darrell Mussatto has tunnel vision. Let me re-word that. North Vancouver City Mayor Darrell Mussatto has a vision of a tunnel.
It’s been done – the vision thing. Not the tunnel. There have been at least three serious swings at this particular cat. All died on paper.
As you may know, two bridges across Burrard Inlet link the North Shore with Metro Vancouver: The Lions Gate, probably the most often misspelled bridge in the nation (as are the eponymous two mountains – plural, get it?), a three-laner built in 1937, and the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, built in 1960, a time when amusing little imports with amusing little names like the Datsun Bluebird tootled around unthreateningly under the chrome teeth of American cars that handled like beached whales.
A 1954 report for the Committee on Burrard Inlet Crossings weighed bridge against tunnel, but concluded: “It would appear obvious a tunnel crossing … would not be an economic proposition.”
The tunnel idea surfaced again in a 1970 report by engineers Swan Wooster. The tunnel “would comprise a submerged tube made up of precast concrete elements laid in a trench.” Cost, $173 million, just six per cent more than a bridge. But the report gingerly backed off stating a choice, aware of explosive neighbourhood and other politics. It advised placing the facts before local civic bodies so that “a consensus of local opinion may be developed.”
Interesting: The report expansively predicted a North Shore population of 190,000 to 220,000 by 1985. Way off. As of 2016 it was just 183,000.
The tunnel aficionados won’t quit. Engineers Christiani & Nielsen tried in 1963. There was another failed attempt, by George Massey (Deas Island) Tunnel builder Hans Bentzen, in 1994. He promised a tunnel by 2000: “If the project remains dead in the water, the eventual implementation could be 15 to 20 years away. Traffic conditions by that time would simply be intolerable.” Bentzen got that right.
Mussatto had scarcely lit the flame again than a far more audacious balloon went up: Richard Littlemore, a Vancouver Sun colleague years ago, proposes a cross-harbour gondola. Sort of Whistler without tears or avalanche fears.
Richard expected eye-rolling. Got it, I imagine. A cheap solution, he claims (Whistler’s gondola cost $51 million in 2008), and cited one in Bolivia that can carry more passengers in an hour than the SeaBus in a day.
My solution, years ago: A giant slingshot on each side. Passengers would be fired across the inlet in seconds into a huge catcher’s mitt, affectionately dubbed the Yogi Berra. TransLink didn’t swing. Unimaginative bureaucrats!
• • •
Further foolishness, but fact: Agent rGm3d2 reports that a longtime West Vancouver Seniors Centre member was furious when charged 50 cents for her customary cup of hot water. Why? Apparently some “cheats’’ were bringing their own tea bags for a cuppa. The mystery remains: Why would anyone drink a cup of hot water?
• • •
West Vancouver’s Kathy Newman, who as an attractive biology student won the heart of a young Murray Newman, was more than a helpmate in the late Dr. Newman’s great career as director of the Vancouver Aquarium. In his 1994 memoir Newman said his wife – “a fish gal” – was active in earliest aquarium days as a docent.
Her death March 7 – barely a week after that of a 27-year aquarium stalwart, Norma Riley – occurred within days of yet another crazed parks board initiative to hobble the aquarium, voting to ban its popular and lovingly tended cetaceans. There’s been a sullen, jealous core in the board, infuriated by its success and expansion in their Stanley Park fiefdom, for the 50-odd years I’ve been in these parts.
A perennial cabal of anti-aquarium animal extremists has long been gripped by an exaggerated anthropomorphism that would close all zoos and such, rejecting their roles for education and as animal rescuers, sometime preservers of rare or endangered species, and means for scientific study. The sacrifice, if that’s what it is, of the individuals for the larger good is well justified.
• • •
The herd media, and Vancouver’s embarrassing mayor, trampled on Franklin Graham’s Festival of Hope as it approached. But it remarkably attracted 34,406 people to Rogers Arena and an online audience of 65,429 in 76 countries. Did you read, see, hear one iota of mainstream media coverage? Tell me. I didn’t.
• • •
West Vancouver’s 2018 election campaign has started. Coun. Craig Cameron’s letter to the editor criticizing Mayor Michael Smith signalled his bid for the mayor’s chair next year – Smith remaining non-committal whether he craves it for a third term. And David Marley, veteran of the Fiscal Five who ripped WV taxes and budgets years ago, warmed up with a call for citizen protest at council next Monday against a 4.45 per cent rise in the property tax rate.
Former Vancouver Sun columnist Trevor Lautens writes every second Friday on politics and life with a West Vancouver bias. rtlautens@gmail.com
What are your thoughts? Send us a letter via email by clicking here or post a comment below.
