In regards to the July 31 petition requesting a ”Re-evaluation of North Shore Transportation Infrastructure” and the argument for a third car crossing to the North Shore: be careful what you wish for.
The ambiguous title of the petition might lead some to assume that sustainable transportation options lie within. But no, the author immediately argues for a third bridge (or tunnel) be built to the North Shore to relieve vehicle congestion that plagues the area. The petition cites efficiency and safety, movement of emergency vehicles, and the economic cost of gridlock as reasons that a third crossing must be constructed.
Is a third crossing the solution, though? If the two existing bridges do in fact function as bottlenecks for vehicle traffic, what will happen to North Shore streets when that bottleneck is removed? What will happen when more people decide to commute to or from the North Shore when, for a brief time, traffic is flowing more smoothly from added lanes?
In the world of transportation, the phenomenon of “induced traffic” is a fancy way of saying “if you build it, they will come.” When a highway is expanded or newly built, people drive on it.
Houston and Los Angeles have tried to outrun this phenomenon … and failed horribly. Their gridlocked 20+ lane highways stand as testament to this. It is acknowledged that this highway expansion was a mistake, and twice in the last 20 years Los Angeles County voters have overwhelmingly approved measures to help correct this mistake with sales tax increases meant to raise more than $150 billion in support of greatly expanded public transit.
If a third crossing were to connect to the North Shore, where would the 19,000 vehicles per lane each day (the existing bridges throughput) go when they reach the north end of a new crossing? Will Marine Drive be widened for them? East Keith Road? Grand Boulevard? What should be demolished to widen those corridors? A new bridge could end up shovelling 100,000 more cars per day on the already-congested streets of the North Shore.
The cost would be astronomical too, with new connecting roads, highways, onramps, and offramps required.
The sensible thing to do would be to forgo a new crossing and its likely $10 billion price tag, and instead give North Shore residents an even more attractive option that won’t turbo-charge congestion in their neighbourhood. Grade-separated rail like SkyTrain could be designed to be so fast, frequent and reliable that you would no longer want to subject yourself to Vancouver traffic.
Our region deserves far more transit, and rail to the North Shore is an inevitable part of that. But, like the theoretical car bridge, it will take a long time and a lot of money.
In the medium term, TransLink’s Bus Rapid Transit proposal across the Second Narrows should happen as quickly as possible, but it remains unfunded by the province or the federal government. Regardless, there are things we can do right now to make transit far more attractive on the North Shore. These measures that are already in place today point the way:
- Queue jumps at both ends of both bridges make buses far more reliable than they otherwise would be by letting buses skip the long queues of cars. Many North Shore residents know this, as 46,000 daily trips are taken on the bridge buses already.
- Bus lanes like those on West Keith and East 3rd/Cotton easily shave six minutes off trips on North Van’s busiest bus routes.
- Both of these measures are already frequently used by first responders to avoid traffic backups and respond to emergencies quickly.
Here’s how we can build on those measures immediately:
- Extend the queue jumps leading to both bridges so that transit riders are even more protected from congestion.
- Certain streets on the North Shore already move more people by bus than by car. Harness the de-congesting effect of buses by extending existing bus lanes.
- Buses already have cameras facing outward. Use them to ticket bus lane violators, to reinforce that no one is above the law. Cities like Seattle and Philadelphia already have this. This would also raise some revenue.
- Most transit-friendly cities already have technology that allows traffic signals to give green lights to waiting buses, but our region is almost universally an exception. We can work toward adopting a system like Lyt that requires very little custom technology, but yields surprising results.
- Boost frequency and hours of operation. Frequent routes like the 222, 240, and 250 suffer from chronic overcrowding. Infrequent routes like the 232 and 255 force riders to wait way too long for a bus, and disappear after 10 p.m. All of these problems can be solved by adding more buses, which will make transit a more realistic alternative to driving. Similar improvements in Surrey have resulted in single-year ridership increases of up to 20 per cent. That 20 per cent translates to six million trips that are no longer congesting Surrey streets. The North Shore deserves the same.
- Bridge congestion is often caused by a collision. Depending on the severity of the crash, it’s often easier to let a few buses through than thousands of cars. The province should set up procedures to ensure the reliable movement of buses when collisions make it impossible to let cars through reliably.
In the end, whether a new car crossing or SkyTrain route is built to the North Shore, it’s safe to say that it would take many years, likely more than a decade, to come to fruition. In the meantime, there will still be growing traffic concerns, and the only way to address that is to provide people with realistic and compelling options to cross Burrard Inlet that are competitive with driving.
The fastest way to do this is to improve existing public transit routes and corridors.
Michael Hall is a transit advocate and volunteer with Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders, a non-profit organization that represents the region’s one million transit riders.
