Editor,
There has been far too many deaths on B.C.'s highways this year, and, sadly, the death toll will climb next year and the year after next and so on.
Government never learns, nor will ever admit to any error of planning, and it does not matter how many people will die as the provincial government does not care. We only have to look at the drug overdose fiasco to realize that.
There is no one solution for the current carnage on our roads and highways, but the deregulated trucking industry; bad highway design; lack of any sensible enforcement; lack of good driver's training; and a complete lack of a viable alternative to the car have contributed to the current dismal state of affairs.
In B.C., "rubber on asphalt" politics rules!
There is an alternative, and Rail for the Valley has been advocating for this solution for over 15 years, and that alternative or part solution is the Rail for the Valley's The Leewood Study gives a completely independent view on reinstating a modern, 130-km regional railway service from Vancouver/Richmond to Chilliwack, using the former BC Electric Interurban line.
Such a rail service could be built for less than half the cost of the current $5 billion (please note: the current estimate of $4.01 billion is for the guideway only and does not include the track, stations, the electrical overhead and the trains needed to operate the extension), 16-km Expo Line extension to Langley and would attract more new customers to transit than TransLink's current questionable planning.
Such a service would serve 14 major destinations.
Such a service will give a viable alternative to the car.
B.C. is not in the 1960s, though many elected officials pretend it is, and adding more road space (induced demand: term to describe the phenomenon of new roads capacity quickly filling to the increased capacity) will only create more congestion, more gridlock, more carnage on our highways and more tragic deaths.
The province has a choice: do nothing but build hugely expensive rapid transit strictly for political prestige and watch highway-related deaths increase exponentially, or invest in regional railways, which would provide an affordable alternative to the car.
Preventing hundreds of future deaths on our roads, would, I think, be a political winner. Doing nothing and continuing to plan and build extremely expensive "rapid transit' (which has an extremely poor history of attracting the motorist from the car) will result in more road deaths, with the the blood from the victims of political hubris, being squarely on the politicians' hands.
Malcolm Johnston, Rail for the Valley
