Chris Gardner: More delay, more cost, more excuses, and no relief for drivers losing countless hours in soul-crushing traffic.
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When British Columbians first started talking about replacing the George Massey Tunnel, it was the early 2000s. A child born then is now old enough to have finished school and started a career, losing countless hours in soul-crushing traffic. If the tunnel does open in the mid-2030s, that person will likely be married with kids. That’s what a generation of political government incompetence looks like.
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This month, the NDP government terminated its contract with Cross Fraser Partnership, the consortium it hired in 2024 to design and build a replacement tunnel under the Fraser River. It says it couldn’t agree on commercial terms, so it’s going back to the market, breaking the project into smaller pieces and pushing major construction past 2027. Translation: more delay, more cost, more excuses, no relief for drivers.
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Remember how we got here. In 2017, the newly elected NDP cancelled a bridge where early work was already underway. That bridge would have opened in 2024 at a cost of $3 billion. Instead, the NDP chose a costlier, environmentally challenging tunnel with a 2021 budget at $4.15 billion.
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Today, industry experts suggest the real figure is at least $9 billion, and likely more. By the time the overruns are tallied, taxpayers face a bill quadruple the original bridge plan.
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Four times the price. Years behind schedule. Still no shovels in the ground.
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This isn’t bad luck; it’s a pattern. The cost of the Site C dam doubled on this government’s watch, from $8 billion to $16 billion. The Pattullo Bridge replacement, the Broadway subway line, the Langley SkyTrain, the Cowichan hospital — it seems that every large public sector project overseen by this government has, or will, come in over-budget and behind schedule, by years and sometimes by multiple billions.
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When CKNW Radio asked whether the cheaper bridge could be revived, Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth’s answer was telling: “No, that’s done. It’s what Metro Vancouver (mayors’ council) wants.”
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That is precisely the group no one should be listening to. These are the same people who turned the $700-million North Shore wastewater plant into a $4-billion boondoggle that will saddle homeowners with a massive property tax surcharge for 30 years.
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Holding up the Lower Mainland’s mayors as competent infrastructure builders and voices of fiscal responsibility isn’t leadership: it’s more like the blind leading the blind.
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The minister couldn’t even bring himself to tell taxpayers the plain truth: This tunnel is on track to become the most expensive piece of transportation infrastructure ever built in this province.
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Here is what makes the whole saga so maddening. B.C. knows how to build bridges — three over this same river. Golden Ears in 2009, the new Port Mann in 2012, and the new Pattullo this year. Put aside the debates about size and capacity of each, we have done this before, repeatedly, faster and cheaper than what is now unfolding at the site of one of Canada’s worst traffic bottlenecks.
