metro vancouver commuters consider voting with their feet over traffic turmoil
douglas todd: as population grows, rants about traffic bottlenecks are now as common across metro vancouver as complaints about overwhelming house prices.
5 minute read
"people are spending too much time commuting and not enough time living," says north vancouver city mayor linda buchanan, referring in part to bottlenecks on the iron workers memorial bridge (pictured). b.c.'s ministry of transportation says it doesn't have data on changing traffic volumes on the bridge.
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about 15 years ago some of my soon-to-be-retired friends said they were moving away from metro vancouver largely because of increasing traffic congestion. i was dubious. it seemed a weak reason.
but now their decision to set up a home in vernon is understandable. along with housing prices and the vancouver canucks, traffic jams are more and more a fiery topic in metro vancouver.
many of us know metro residents who are considering voting with their feet in part because of traffic bottlenecks.
without detailing the reasons for the trend, statcan has captured how since 2017 more british columbians have been moving out of metro vancouver to elsewhere in the province than coming into the megalopolis.
whether it’s griping about the stop-and-start trip from vancouver to chilliwack, grinding to a halt on the iron workers memorial bridge or limping along once-smooth-flowing 16th avenue to ubc, rants and raves about gridlock are too many to count these days.
north vancouver city mayor linda buchanan recently aired the emotions of many across the region when she said, “anyone living on the north shore knows traffic congestion has reached a tipping point. people are spending too much time commuting and not enough time living.”
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a regional council of mayors has acknowledged, “anyone who tries to get around the region knows metro vancouver is suffering from congestion.” it frustrates commuters every single day, the mayors said.
“it’s what you would expect from population growth,” said dan mountain, spokesperson for translink.
metro vancouver is now the fourth most dense region in north america, after new york, toronto and san francisco. the metro vancouver population in 1986, when b.c. hosted the world exposition on transportation and communication, was 1.54 million.
less than 40 years later, bcstats estimates the metro vancouver population has grown by 100 per cent — to 3.07 million.
but it’s almost impossible to get the government bodies responsible for transportation to provide comparative trip times from either the era of expo 86 — for which the motto, perhaps ironically, was “world in motion, world in touch” — or more recently.
mountain admitted it’s difficult to provide historic data on commuting times. i ran into similar polite bewilderment, or in some cases avoidance, from spokespeople for the metro vancouver regional district, the ministry of transportation and the city of vancouver, all of which in different ways are responsible for responding to increasingly tortuous traffic volume.
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given the information bottleneck from governments, the only really useful tidbit of data came from translink, which said that transit trip times across metro vancouver are now on average 8.5 per cent slower than in 2013.
the city of vancouver did not get back by press time, despite having three working days to do so.
and all the ministry of transportation offered was a sample of bridge volume data that proved meaningless. the ministry official said it had no information on volumes on the iron workers memorial bridge to north vancouver, which is currently among the most problematic.
for his part, john shepherd, a business professor at kwantlen polytechnic university who lives in richmond and commutes to teach in surrey and at ubc, said, “gridlock is getting worse, including this fall.”
some of shepherd’s family members in richmond are considering quitting their jobs because of the increasingly “brutal” trip to downtown vancouver.
a record high bump of temporary residents since the pandemic has added to the region’s latest transportation challenges, shepherd said, noting the recent census doesn’t capture the surge. his observation bears out: the 2021 census pegs the population of metro vancouver at only 2.64 million, whereas bcstats estimates the tally at well over three million.
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despite the reluctance of b.c.’s different levels of government to provide real information on worsening travel times, they are trying to respond to the exasperation.
they’ve been adding skytrain extensions in surrey, building a new bridge in new westminster, adding hov lanes, widening highways, prioritizing buses and constantly adjusting transit routes.
to the chagrin of some drivers, however, local governments are also doing things that can slow trip times. in the debate over which mode of travel should get preference, they are instituting traffic-calming measures, replacing vehicle lanes with bicycle paths and installing more pedestrian-activated lights.
everyday traffic along grandview, at rupert, in vancouver.
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an official of the ministry of transportation confessed, in a conversation not meant for attribution, that staff wished they knew what the solution was to deteriorating commuting times.
the official remembered being in his parents’ car as a young person, cruising the trans-canada highway from chilliwack to vancouver, and being able to count virtually every passing car. there were that few.
now, coming into vancouver from the fraser valley, the official noted the bumper-to-bumper highway traffic often begins around chilliwack, which is almost 100 kilometres from downtown.
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after facing years of outcry, the b.c. government finally has bulldozers expanding the trans-canada from langley to abbotsford.
and during b.c.’s october election, the ndp promised $500 million for improved transit from the north shore to vancouver and the conservatives vowed to build a new iron workers memorial bridge.
upset goes far beyond the trans-canada highway, however.
snarls and congestion rage as metro’s population expands at record levels — 3.3 per cent in the recent one-year period, almost entirely fuelled by international migration.
since migration rates are dictated out of the office of prime minister justin trudeau, there is not a great deal metro politicians can directly do about them, except occasionally complain that housing, roads and infrastructure can’t keep up.
yet other ideas have been put forward. for instance, some planners say commuting times could be reduced if vancouver stopped hogging jobs, including with its drastically upzoned broadway plan. they encourage more and bigger job hubs in the suburbs, closer to where many people can afford to live.
others have argued against governments placing so much stress on high-density traffic and subway corridors. they suggest reducing bottlenecks by building more dispersed transit networks, like the neighbourhood streetcar system that used to serve vancouver.
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whatever the proposals, solutions won’t come easily for metro vancouver’s over-stressed, labyrinthine commuter complex. the well-being of residents, however, hangs in the balance.
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traffic issues in metro vancouver are knotty. we would like to hear from readers about their experience with commuting, plus ideas regarding possible fixes. please send to dtodd@postmedia.com
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