If you’ve tried to drive on or off the North Shore, you’re likely no stranger to gridlock and road rage.
An online petition was posted on change.org last week hoping to tap into that frustration. The petition is asking for a third crossing to take pressure off our aging bridges in the face of massive future development.
By Sunday night the petition had garnered more than 5,400 signatures, a couple of news stories and lots of discussion on social media posts.
A random sampling of comments suggests about as many people are opposed to a third traffic bridge as are for one.
For those who want a traffic bridge, some want a third crossing from Deep Cove to Port Moody or Belcarra or Burnaby or downtown. Others would like to see West Van connected to Point Grey or the Sunshine Coast.
Many would prefer a tunnel. Most want rapid transit.
And, yes, we were having the exact same debate in 1971. According to news stories back then, 40 per cent of North Shore residents did not want a new automobile crossing. Residents argued that “it would be just another route by which the North Shore would be invaded.” Vancouver Alderman Harry Rankin suggested alternatives could be to stagger rush-hour traffic, provide ferries and use the railway bridge for commuter trains.
The loudest advocate for a third crossing was Warnett Kennedy, an architect, town planner and Alderman. He laid out his plan in a 1974 book, Vancouver Tomorrow: A search for Greatness.
“One might think that the water which separates the North Shore from Vancouver’s downtown was the Grand Canyon. This mindlock has to be broken. It stultifies imagination in planning,” he wrote.
Kennedy’s plan was to build a tunnel under Thurlow Street whereby cars would cross to the North Shore by Brockton Point and continue over the world’s biggest cable bridge. They would exit at Pemberton Avenue. Rapid transit was an integral part of the plan.
The cost he said, would be eight percent less than a tunnel.
Kennedy also argued for a “Twin City.”
“The Twin City Concept combined with a Third Crossing would be enormously useful,” he wrote. “Hopefully a time will come when we talk of “Vancouver One” and “Vancouver Two.”
In his vision of two downtown Vancouvers, Burrard Inlet would be seen as a lake in the centre.
“If a rapid transit link were to exist today it would take only four minutes running time to travel from Vancouver’s Central Business District to a Central Business District on the North Shore,” he wrote. “It would be as though Vancouver had reached out and pulled the North Shore almost alongside its downtown. The water of the harbour, in imagination and for all practical purposes, is narrowed to a river’s width.”
The only impediment for getting his plan off the paper was that North Vancouver City, and the District of North Vancouver and West Vancouver would need to amalgamate with their “mother city” Vancouver.
Good luck with that.
The plan for a third crossing was officially killed in 1972. Five years later we had the SeaBus.
By the early 1990s, the Lions Gate Bridge was in serious need of an upgrade or replacement.
The options were narrowed down to three proposals. One was to build a tunnel; another to twin the bridge and double the number of lanes; and the third was to double-deck the existing three-lane bridge.
In 1994, Safdie partnered with engineering firm SNC Lavalin, and the Squamish Nation, which owned the land on the north end of the bridge.
They wanted to build an identical bridge to the east of the original structure that would carry northbound traffic, while the original bridge would carry vehicles south into Stanley Park.
As we now know, the province chose the cheapest and least controversial option, electing to widen the existing bridge and the main bridge deck.
Over half a century later we still can’t agree on a third crossing, which in all likelihood will just be a replacement for the aging 1960 Ironworkers Memorial bridge.
Perhaps this time we’ll finally get rapid transit.
Eve Lazarus is a North Vancouver resident and author. Her latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck. [email protected]
