by Richard Furness BC Ferries is at it again. Our bank accounts and credit are being sucked dry by all and sundry, including an institution most of us regard as a public service. The effect of those rate increases on coastal communities who depend on the ferries, and whose economies are already in precarious condition, will be to drain even more money out of them.
It needn’t be like that.
Our senior governments have been bulldozing money into the transportation system in and around Vancouver for how many years now? Lost track? So have we. Sure, they’ve got to do it, but what about the rest of us?
We of the Third Crossing Society suggest there’s more to our province than just its commercial hub. We also dare to suggest that by helping those of us in the hinterland meet our needs, the government will also serve Vancouver very well, and prepare the whole province for a more promising future.
We suggest that the time has come to complete a new, mid-province transportation corridor—an economic lifeline linking the struggling economies of north Vancouver Island with those along the Sea to Sky Highway and the rest of the province—by means of a third crossing of the coastal mountains.
With the stroke of a pen and a modest amount of road work, this corridor would:
• Stimulate the economy of the northern communities of Vancouver Island and the vast area immediately north of the Lower Mainland.
• Create a new playground for tourists and new retirement havens for the wave of winter-weary retirees expected to roll west starting next year.
• Best of all for a government that must try to please everyone, ease the congestion on Vancouver’s highways, at its ferry terminals and eventually in its port.
Our proposed crossing would accomplish all that and the beauty of it is that much of the new corridor is already in place: (a) the under-utilized ferry run between Comox and Powell River; (b) the Sea to Sky Highway; and (c) about 170 kilometres of forest roads—reaching toward each other but not yet touching—out of Squamish and Powell River.
To connect them, and complete the corridor, a mere 30 to 35 kilometres of actual new road would have to be built, and an affordable three-kilometre tunnel bored through one mountain to avoid expensive high-elevation construction, switchbacks and winter maintenance.
Undertake those two projects, neither of them overwhelming, et voilà!—the province has its third crossing and has met three separate but related challenges with one stroke.
Our best estimate is that on a per-kilometre basis, this mid-province economic lifeline would cost less than the Coquihalla. We propose it with one eye on the present, but both eyes on the future: to a freedom of movement bound to attract retirees, businesses and investors, while relieving some of the congestion in the crowded Lower Mainland. All that, with just one modest road project.
Richard Furness is secretary of the Third Crossing Society.
