HOV lane is going, while single-occupancy lanes jammed.
The "Gateway to Global Warming"
Yesterday's Solutions to Tomorrows Problems.
No construction contracts have been signed yet for the B.C. “Gateway Program” which may well be the most harmful transportation infrastructure plan in the history of our province if not our country. The estimated $10 Billion proposal includes new and expanded port infrastructure, highways, bridges, rail yards, and container terminals to facilitate importing more goods from China and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific, and exporting more of B.C.’s non-renewable resources.
The various elements of the Gateway plan would drastically increase the Lower Mainland’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and increase pollution levels in the region. The tripling of shipping vessels and heavy truck traffic off Deltaport will feed new traffic onto proposed roadways such as the South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR), the Twinned Port Mann Bridge, the widened Highway 1, and then into the heart of the Lower Mainland. To make things worse the Gateway Project will induce car dependent suburban sprawl that leads to further global warming emissions and less healthy communities.
The SFPR itself will seriously harm Burns Bog, the lungs of the Lower Mainland and our carbon sink.
The expansion of Deltaport on Roberts Bank will have serious impacts on migratory birds such as the sandpiper which relies on the region to survive as they fly north. Also port expansion at Delta Port may severally impact orca whales whose population in the area is already dwindling.
Salmon in the Fraser River, which are already under threat, would be heavily impacted by the Gateway Project due to the massive increases in pollution that it would cause along the north and south banks of the Fraser.
The Gateway Project would impact about one thousand hectares of farmland, some of BC’s most fertile.
The Gateway mega project contradicts the last democratic community planning process that was held around the region, the Livable Region Strategic Plan. Gateway induces car dependent sprawl and starves public transit by monopolizing billions of dollars in public transportation funding.
In a public opinion poll released last May, 69% of Lower Mainland residents said they would like to see money which is currently designated for highway construction to be re-directed to public transit in light of concerns about global warming.
Macquarie Bank, the Gateway project’s only financiers as of yet, has failed to meet a January 8th deadline for signing off on the project’s financing. It has been reported that Macquarie is struggling to raise the $2 Billion it would need up front due to the global financial crisis. The Federal Government will table a budget on January 27th that may pass the bill for the full cost of the Gateway project onto taxpayers.
The BC Treasury Board says that we could create 7 times as many jobs by investing in public transit as we could by investing the same amount of money in highway construction.
We have a chance to stabilize our economy and our climate by investing in clean, green jobs and smart projects like reliable and affordable public transit. We need green budgets, not bail-outs of wasteful and dangerous boondoggles like the Gateway Project.
If you would like to stay informed about the campaign to stop "the gateway to global warming" and the campaign to get better transit before freeways email gateway@wildernesscommittee.org with the subject line ADD ME.
