Thanks to an exhaustive study we finally know the truth: traffic is bad. It’s gotten about nine per cent worse since 2011 as 1,880 additional 9-to-5 commuters cross one bridge to make a living here and one more bridge to get where they live. (The StatsCan figures don’t include roving construction workers who build the North Shore houses most of them will never afford.)
At the start of 2017, North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Jane Thornthwaite announced we were “finally going to fix” much of our daily gridlock with $198 million worth of infrastructure.
All three levels of government championed this sensible-sounding solution that requires no personal responsibility or changes in behaviour. Only it hasn’t worked anywhere in the world.
Traffic in Singapore is so bad the government mandates drivers pay thousands for a certificate just to become eligible to buy a car. Caving to the laws of induced demand, Paris and Copenhagen have largely parted with parking spots in their city centres to dissuade drivers. A city in Spain tried offering drivers a trade: your car for a lifetime transit pass.
But on the North Shore we’re still clinging to the hope that if we build it, they won’t come.
We do hope our traffic problems will be finished in a few years alongside the Mountain and Dollarton highway interchanges. But at the moment, it seems like that $198 million would’ve been better spent bribing drivers to take the bus.
Obviously traffic is bad. The real question is: is it bad enough? Is it bad enough for a provincial government to pledge $7 or $8 billion toward public transit without forsaking their chances of ever winning another election?
We certainly hope so, because as long as our vacancy rates hover just north of zero, the North Shore will remain a journey for too many and a destination for too few.
Yes, traffic is bad. That doesn’t mean it can’t get worse. It all depends on what we build.
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