For those who like nice round numbers, Thursday, September 9, 2004, is exactly 250 days from the next general election in BC. It is probably not a simple love of numbers that leads the Campbell government to phrase many of its announcements with reference to 2010. A two week sporting event will come and go, but it must not distort planning priorities for decades to come.

The latest example of distorting priorities, while playing politics for the upcoming Surrey - Panorama Ridge by-election, is Kevin Falcon's claim that the Port Mann will be twinned, highway 1 will be made 8 lanes to Langley, and highway 10 will be substantially upgraded, all by 2010. The projects, known as the Gateway Program, have been on the drawing boards for the Ministry of Transportation and the GVRD for well over a decade. What's missing is how the required expenditures fit into planning for transportation requirements in the rest of the province, and how the highway improvements will be balanced with transit so as not to simply make a bigger and more polluting parking lot.

On the Rafe Mair show, Mary Polak, Liberal candidate in the by-election, claimed that the cars are already there which demonstrates the need for the expanded highways. "Build it and they will come" is nowhere truer than when applied to road construction. Does it make sense to correctly oppose Sumas II and then replace it with additional tens of thousands of polluting vehicles? Part of the GVRD's "Livable Region Strategic Plan", adopted in 1996, is based on moderating traffic demand by reducing car use. The provincial government should not destroy years of planning for livable town centres by fast tracking service for automobiles. Campbell and Falcon may be upset that they had to brow beat TransLink in order to get it to distort its priorities and put an airport RAV line ahead of the northeast sector, but they shouldn't compound their error by ignoring the GVRD in highway construction. The Port Mann will eventually be twinned but when it is, it should be part of an integrated transportation plan.

The provincial transportation plan (see http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/sp2004/trans/trans.pdf) says twinning the Port Mann bridge "and widening 33 km of the Trans-Canada Highway is one of three major projects the province is considering through new partnerships, given support from TransLink, local communities, industry and the public." The plan suggests that the 3.5 cents per litre motor fuel tax that was implemented on March 1, 2003, is not sufficient to finance transportation requirements throughout the province. "New partnerships" is code language for yet another public-private partnership, but the Campbell government has failed in every attempt to implement its blind faith that the private sector will come to its rescue. The Ministry's "service plan" says "The Ministry of Transportation is currently working with the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (GVTA) and municipalities to assess the existing highway network, review traffic forecasts and develop the scope of each potential project. Preliminary estimates suggest that the infrastructure investment would be in the range of $3 billion. Detailed consultation with local governments, communities and road users will begin in 2004." What kind of consultation is it for Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon to take a helicopter trip over the area, and then announce that the Gateway Projects will be completed by 2010?