The Environmental Atheist

A few weeks ago, my friend Sean and I were stuck in the crawl of cars coming from the Fraser Valley onto the Port Mann Bridge and discussing the proposed twinning of that span. There's been plenty of debate about this. It's really a silly idea. Thanks to the efforts of vocal citizenry and savvy planners, Vancouver has prided itself in being one of the only major cities in the world that doesn't have a freeway cutting through the heart of it. We've compensated for this by working to change the way people get into the city, making mass transit the optimum choice. There are still bottlenecks, the south side of the Port Mann being one of the worst (we were in stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic, 5km from the bridge, on a Sunday), but most of the others have been handled effectively. Traffic from Port Mann all the way to the Second Narrows Bridge flows relatively smoothly thanks to an HOV lane and some improvements on the interchanges. All of this is accomplished with only 3 lanes in either direction for most of that stretch, including the HOV lanes. Twinning the Port Mann Bridge would only serve to move that bottleneck further west, so that all of the gains made in the section of the Trans-Canada running through Coquitlam, Burnaby and Vancouver would be lost. Twinning would allow a massive flow of vehicles to enter Coquitlam unchecked. HOV lanes would do little to ease the congestion.

There has to be a way to get more people sharing their rides into town, either on transit vehicles or in carpools. That particular corridor is not well served by transit. The Skytrain crosses near the Port Mann, but heads southward into Surrey. It doesn't help the residents of Langley, Cloverdale, Abbotsford or Chilliwack to get out of their cars. I talked about placing a toll booth on the south end of the Port Mann, but Sean came up with an even better idea. Why not charge tolls to Single Occupant Vehicles, and reduce or eliminate tolls for vehicles with more than one person riding? Also, he suggested adding a lane, much like the PACE lanes they used to have at the border crossings, for drivers who cross the bridge alone daily and would prefer to pay their tolls on a monthly basis. Aside from being a cash cow that would aid in funding more sustainable projects by Translink, it would alter the web of incentives that keep people driving alone and clogging up the highways. Money talks. A monetary annoyance is a great incentive. Furthermore it would substantially delay any need to increase the capacity of the Trans-Canada Highway in the Lower Mainland.

There may be some issues with drivers diverting west to the Alex Fraser Bridge or East to the new Golden Ears Bridge, but neither of those offer a faster route into Vancouver. Port Mann is the perfect location to introduce this city to the concept of the turnpike because of the fact that all Vancouver-bound Fraser Valley traffic has to cross there. It's not perfect, in that some might see that this sector of the Lower Mainland would be unfairly penalized simply by virtue of its location. The concept of only charging SOVs mitigates that, because anyone could cross the span for free if they shared the ride. And if it acts as a better incentive to increase HOV use, better that it be introduced at the location of greatest congestion. If at the same time a similar toll were introduced on the Lion's Gate bridge in North Van, geographical outrage would be further mitigated.

This sort of toll would be like a user tax or a luxury tax of the drivers who directly cause the problem of bottleneck congestion. It's definitely worth further discussion. Maybe a region-wide plebiscite at the next civic election would test the waters. If twinning and the westward shift of congestion is the alternative, and charging tolls actually solved the problem without raising property taxes, maybe residents wouldn't oppose this solution.