Dear Editor:
Re: North Shore Bridges and Regional Mobility Pricing, Aug. 6 Mayor’s Message (paid advertisement).
District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton shared a message with us about regional mobility pricing of North Shore bridges.
He covered the history of the bridges, the unfairness of certain tolls, promises made by both major parties to abandon tolling and if so, how would bridges be paid for. He mentioned the increasing traffic problem caused by the number of people who cannot afford to live in Vancouver and have to travel here to work. In next month’s message, he will advise on how other cities deal with these problems.
While this may be interesting, surely a wider scope of planning is required to deal with the fact that we are steadily running into gridlock as municipalities are continuing to build on every speck of unused space, immigration is being increased, foreign buying continues certainly from richer overseas buyers that drive up the costs, loopholes exist that allow “proxy” buying here so that we are missing billions of tax dollars, and so on.
There seems to be no long-term planning and no central planning authority that deals with these issues under one heading.
We seem to be heading for a major crunch.
Another bridge or tunnel to the North Shore will take eight years to decide where, what kind, obtain bids, build it and change the support infrastructure. Meantime, another million or more people will have settled here. Will we all be using bicycles?
While two to three years ago studies said 40 per cent of locals could not afford to live here, the next study will likely say 60, maybe 70 per cent cannot live here.
So what group is doing any significant long-term planning? What thought is being put into the possible start of satellite cities to which people and business are attracted to by the reduction of their taxes. Can the demand to live in Vancouver be reduced?
Patrick Hill
West Vancouver
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