Delta to press province over state of ‘rotting’ George Massey Tunnel
Delta’s mayor and top bureaucrat say that replacing the George Massey Tunnel should be a priority for the new provincial government because it’s old, congested, dangerous to drivers and first responders — and will not withstand even a moderate earthquake.
“This tunnel’s rotting. Are we just going to let it rot?” Delta chief administrative officer George Harvie said Thursday during a meeting with the editorial boards of The Vancouver Sun and Province.
Delta Mayor Lois Jackson is the only mayor in the region who is in favour of building a bridge to replace the George Massey Tunnel, a 58-year-old structure that carries traffic under the Fraser River between Delta and Richmond.
The project has been in the works for years and preliminary construction on the $3.5-billion bridge has already started. However, it could be derailed by the new NDP government.
“The need is definitely there,” Jackson said.
Jackson plans to meet with Premier John Horgan, Liberal Opposition Leader Christy Clark and Green party Leader Andrew Weaver to convince them that the project should go ahead.
“I really think I’ve got to stress with the three leaders (to) set your politics aside and look at the issue and what’s best for the province and the people that live here and let’s do the right thing,” Jackson said.
The bridge was a pet project of Clark’s when she was premier, but Horgan has said a bridge is not necessarily the right way to address congestion in the area. He has stopped short of saying he will scrap the project altogether and instead has talked about reviewing options.
“I’m going to take counsel from the ministry when I get a chance to sit down with staff and be guided by the hard work the mayors in the region have done,” Horgan said Tuesday after he was sworn in as premier.
Newly appointed Transportation Minister Claire Trevena echoed Horgan’s comments that more research will need to be done on the bridge project, but that most local mayors don’t want it and the NDP will focus on what the mayors want for transit in the region.
The Greens have taken a similar approach, saying during the election campaign they would put the project on hold and conduct a review.
“How quickly we can get together with the three leaders I don’t know, we’ve certainly been trying to get meetings with them to explain to them how important this is,” said Jackson. “The thing is shovel ready, everything is ready to go. It would be such a waste because of somebody’s political agenda to negate this really huge need, not only for Delta.”
Harvie said he hopes the deputy minister of transportation, who has remained in his job, will be able to sit down with the new cabinet and present all of the reasons why the bridge is a good idea and should be built immediately.
“If it fails, it’s going to be a huge issue for the province,” he said.
Jackson said the multitude of studies that have been done on the tunnel over the years speak for themselves. The results of those studies are summarized in a report Delta released earlier this month.
She pointed to studies stating the tunnel is extremely vulnerable to even a moderate earthquake. It’s not feasible to bring the tunnel up to seismic standards because of unstable soil under the structure that would liquefy in a quake.
“All of this is fact — it’s not our reports, it’s the engineering reports collected over the years,” Harvie said. “Its day is done.”
A bridge, on the other hand, would be built to withstand a much stronger earthquake.
Twinning or replacing the tunnel has been proposed as an alternative by bridge opponents, but Jackson said the old tunnel will be at the end of its useful life in 15 years, making twinning a non-starter.
A new tunnel would disrupt farmland and the river’s ecosystem, she said, and be more expensive than the $3.5 billion quoted for the bridge because of the soil stabilization that would have to be done.
A bridge would also be safer than the tunnel for people who use it on a daily basis, Jackson said, relieving some congestion and making it easier for first responders to deal with accidents. She said injuries in tunnel crashes are severe and the rate of fatalities is higher because it takes longer for firefighters and paramedics to get there.
Jackson said she will try to further convince her colleagues at the municipal level that the bridge is a worthy project.
Metro mayors, with the exception of Jackson, said last summer they opposed the bridge because of its negative effect on the livability of the region and ongoing concerns about an inadequate stakeholder input process and insufficient access to technical information.
It would be such a waste because of somebody’s political agenda to negate this really huge need, not only for Delta.