With Friday’s announcement, almost $200 million is now being spent to widen Highway 1 and revamp our local interchanges in a bid to ease traffic congestion.
For drivers on the North Shore, this is a good thing. Traffic problems have escalated to the point of being untenable. The new corridor improvements have every possibility of making getting around North Vancouver – those picking up their kids from daycare, going to sports practice or grocery shopping – much less frustrating.
For the 80 per cent of traffic that’s heading over the Ironworkers, however, the fix is less clear. Politicians love road and bridge projects – big tangible stretches of asphalt, steel and concrete. But regionally, they’re also evidence of a mid-century way of thinking – that the solution to congestion is more road capacity.
Provincial statistics show the North Shore’s population has largely flatlined. A 2015 traffic study put the blame for our worsening traffic woes on a big increase in people driving here for work.
If we continue the trend of exiling our working class to the suburban valley, it’s only a matter of time before our fancy new infrastructure will be at capacity again.
While we welcome Friday’s announcement, it won’t solve larger traffic problems over the long term. The best way to do that is to have people live closer to where they work – which means more affordable housing options. Improving our transit system and some form of road pricing will also be key.
As the revered city planner Lewis Mumford acutely noted in 1955, adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.
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