The wheels are now turning on a massive plan to do something about the gridlock at the Ironworkers bridgehead.
With the province, feds and District of North Vancouver putting up a combined $50 million, we're going to see a new overpass at Mountain Highway and a handful of new onramps and off-ramps.
As anyone who has rolled down the Cut at 10 kilometres an hour will tell you, any improvement is welcome.
The project isn't expected to be completed until 2018 and it's just the first part of a three-phase project that includes updates to interchanges at Main Street and Mount Seymour Parkway. This is expected to drag on for at least a decade and cost about $140 million.
But while there's no question that our road infrastructure is in need of an update, other parts of our system have been just as badly neglected.
Drivers may grumble as they sit and wait for their turn to merge but the person at the bus stop has probably been waiting just as long and he or she is exposed to the elements in the meantime.
And unlike more frequent bus service, the $140 million in engineering and concrete for highway interchanges isn't being put to a referendum. This is representative of the old ways of thinking about transportation in which we plan everything around roads and cars and other modes of transportation are secondary.
We applaud our governments for this funding. The North Shore will be better for it. But let's not forget the person at the bus stop. It's cold out there.
