by Guy Gentner
September 2006
Is the South Fraser Perimeter Road a highway to nowhere or is it a gateway for more congestion? Either way, as it is currently laid out it is not a favourable option for Delta.
Globalization is having an impact on our daily lives and one does not have to look very far to see what those results will mean. The transportation plan for the lower mainland is geared to accommodate global trade. In Canada and BC, there is no other municipality than Delta or more specifically the community of North Delta that will bear the brunt of the demands of the global market.
It has been said that progress can be evaluated by our movement of goods and services. Canada’s historic advancement was built on the notion of building a railroad and integrated communications network; however, the nation’s rail system was built more for political reasons, ironically, one of which was to reach the Pacific Northwest before the avaricious American cousins could lay claim on BC. The advancement of our society and growth of our economy has been entrenched with the notion of more roads, railroads, airports and shipping lines.
Within that tradition we fast-forward to 2006 and find the Liberal government’s $3 billion Gateway Program that includes a four-lane freeway along North Delta’s Fraser riverfront and a massive concrete wall on an escarpment that 8,000 years ago hosted one of BC’s and North America’s first fishing villages.
Politically, there is no doubt that the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road train has left the station. This corridor has been premised on the need to move goods –mostly manufactured goods made outside of BC! The hard reality is that almost one half of today’s world trade involves transnational corporations. This may be the new world order; however, all the BC taxpayer money spent on trade infrastructure improvements could be meaningless if in one micro-second, a decision made halfway around the world could shut down a port. With both senior governments’ buy-in with the need for gateway to the Pacific and its South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFP Rd), a decision made in Europe brings into question Gordon Campbell’s buoyant cheerleading squad for globalization.
Globalization and Port Expansion
In a speech in the Legislature I pointed out that the Fraser Surrey Docks was losing 70 per cent of its container business because of a decision made by a shipping line half way around the world. The European-based shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd purchased Canadian-based CP Ships in December. Hapag-Lloyd, which is based in Hanover and had earnings before tax of €278 million in 2004, knows the container business. So as global forces are changing the shipping map of the world, decisions made in Germany will decide the fate of our ports. The Liberal government knows that CP sold its ships and container movements along the Fraser are to change and yet Victoria persists in its Gateway program.
Hapag-Lloyd first made an offer to purchase CP Ships last August for $1.7 billion Euros. On Dec. 15, CP shareholders approved the purchase. CP had two container services calling at Fraser Surrey Docks, but those containers will now arrive at Delta Port in Roberts Bank and Van Term in Burrard Inlet. After the government spent a $3 million upgrade of container cranes at Fraser-Surrey Docks, what did Hapag-Lloyd know that the government doesn’t –after all isn’t the rationale of improved container capacity and an $800 million SFPR Rd to facilitate a growing Fraser Surrey Docks?
Fraser Surrey Docks president and chief executive officer Gino Crisanti confirmed in the Delta Optimist that the decision by Hapag Lloyd to discontinue the CP service result in "significant job losses" and a "substantial loss to our container business. This has resulted in an across-the-board job loss both in union and management. It's a 40 per cent cut in employees." Crisanti cited the muscle Globalization has by admitting that the decision wasn't a reflection of the port and its ability or current infrastructure: "In our case, it was a global merger." Even Capt. Norman Stark, president and chief executive officer of TSI, the company that operates the Delta Port container terminal, agreed, noting Delta Port has had shipping lines leave due to mergers around the globe.
Could the singers of the globalization chorus create such hysteria that British Columbians should now accept that sheer speculation is a reason for all of us to invest $3 billion on infrastructure that create little wealth or real jobs? Is there hard evidence that in the age of the global free-market, goods will have easiest access to North America markets only through Delta Port and the Fraser River? As the Canadian dollar continues to rise, will increased trade from Asia be determined by a new SFPR or cheaper labour in proposed Mexican ports of entry? How much of the trade in grid lock Lower Mainland will be lost to the deepest ice-free port on the continent? Prince Rupert is the shortest link between Shanghai and Chicago (a full day and a half shorter than Vancouver). It’s also the terminus of an under-utilized rail network. Prince Rupert could and should handle four times the container traffic.
Trade or Wealth
Globalization means that power will lie with global markets. The prophets for major port expansion, Gateway and the SFP Rd also believe in a global market, freed of inhibiting regulations that would gradually establish so-called international economic equity. SFP Rd is based on an ideology that world trade is real wealth irregardless of whether raw commodities are exported and manufactured goods are imported from abroad. SFP Rd is being built to make a few people rich somewhere else in the world while young British Columbians search for jobs as Wall-Mart greeters or take their trained expertise outside their province.
The present provincial government continues in its belief system, even though both port authorities in the Lower Mainland are now talking merger. It makes sense. How can they compete for the same federal infrastructure money if decisions in Hamburg can force closure of container movements up the Fraser? With one Lower Mainland port authority, the activity at Fraser-Surrey Docks will evolve as a regional truck ferry-barge system attached to Delta Port. Deployment of regional goods will be barged between Delta Port’s Roberts Bank and up the Fraser River. So what is the logic for an $800 million SFP Rd if goods will be moved along the river as its highway?
Paying the Freight
The salability of the $3 billion Gateway Transportation Program is to open up BC’s transportation network which will reduce congestion, meet the needs of our growing economy, increase Asia-Pacific trade, and a growing population. But part payment in additional to taxes will be through tolling. The Gateway program is to place tolls on politically selected sites. Or as I said in the House:
The troll is greedy, he's selfish, he's self-absorbed. He's a nasty little guy, and he's miserable because of it. But he wants to appear that he's nice, especially in front of the camera. He wants to put forth a really good image of himself, but he's evil….Now I’m not suggesting that the Minister is the troll hiding under the Bridge, but he’s a politician nevertheless, who can decide who pays and where and it certainly isn’t based on fairness.
The point is that commuters going to and from work over the twinned Port Mann will be tolled and yet the users of the Sea to Sky – a gateway to very special place indeed and the users of the corridor for globalization – and the SFP Rd will not. For the fiscal prudent, toll evaders will select the SFP Rd and other roads through North Delta to reach points in Burnaby and Vancouver rather than pay the daily tax to commute. At a lunch at the Surrey Chamber of Commerce luncheon (Feb 10 2006), the Minister of Transportation referred to the SFP Rd as “the viable alternative –the non-toll alternative.”
Capacity and Alternatives
At the North Delta Recreation Centre on June 6 2006 I attended with many other concerned North Delta residents the information presentation by the Ministry of Transportation’s Gateway proposal for SFP Rd. I was able to corner the Executive Director, Mike Proudfoot with the question: How long will it take for the SFP Rd to reach its full capacity? His response was startling. Gateway’s crafty peddler retorted: “Fifteen to twenty years.” I asked what is planned for 20 years once the SFP Rd reached grid-lock? “Well,” he replied, “I guess we’ll build another road.”
I shouldn’t have been so shocked with the atypical answer, but I was. It certainly is a different picture from what a journalist had recently written:
Consider a prosperous metropolitan region. Throw in port facilities crucial to international interests. Add an era of explosive growth in trade, an unruly suburban sprawl and an inconveniently placed river. Imagine it wrapped in tangles of costly and polluting traffic congestion, with big knots at either end of a highway along a river by a residential neighbourhood in the middle of it all. Now think outside the box and get that region ready for even more traffic, even more people and a hell of a lot more trade.
I proceeded to ask the obvious, where is this other road? I was told of an already planned Surrey connector between Hwy 99 at Mud Bay to the 401-Trans-Canada Hwy at 216th St. He confided that in Ministerial circles it is referred to as “the diagonal” (See attachment).
Why wouldn’t the ministry be pursuing “the diagonal” before the SFP Rd based on a few simple observations?
• The diagonal would have considerable savings compared to the SFP Rd proposal
• The diagonal was not a hazardous transportation corridor built on a salmon bearing river the size of the Fraser River
• As the crow flies, the diagonal was a quicker route to and from Delta Port and the Trans-Canada Highway.
• SFP Rd would be obsolete in 15 to 20 years
The Minister’s envoy countered that “The Diagonal” would not “address those gateways along the Fraser River.” Clearly, the Liberal government is so convinced that its reigning ideology is so inevitable it can’t see that it is in a vacuum. There may be an argument made for needed increased infrastructure for trade, but there is no proof there is a need for a four-lane express lane along British Columbia’s most important fish-bearing river, the Fraser. With a planned alternative such as “The Diagonal” connecting Delta Port with points in the Fraser Valley, improved rail capacity, diversifying trade capability in Prince Rupert we can manage global trade by reducing impacts on the environment such as the Fraser River, Burns Bog and Roberts Bank and residential areas in Delta, Surrey, and the Fraser Valley. With the narrow transportation corridor within the Fraser Valley, most cargo should go directly from ship to rail, and get sorted at a new multi-modal terminal at an island transportation nexus in the interior. Kamloops, for example, could act as our rail depot and crossroad. Gateway cash should be diverted toward new rail bridges to ease the chronic rail congestion in the Fraser Valley.
There may be a trade-off. In North Delta we now have over 4,000 trucks a day on two lanes running through a residential area and the need to connect industrial areas and regional river-port facilities will be unavoidable even with “The Diagonal.”
Can we soften the impacts of the SFP Rd by reducing its size to a commercial vehicle only, two-lane road rather than four-lanes, restricting hazardous freight, thereby making it economically feasible to complement the feature with a snow-shed-like cover and protect the residents from noise and pollution, as was once proposed by Delta Council? If we adopt an alternative route for longer hauling from Delta Port to points beyond and move the current truck traffic from two-lane River Rd to a two-lane 60 km SFP Rd could we not better enhance our ravines and not bear on an escarpment vulnerable to erosion and sloughing? By covering the blemish with a cost-effective, green esplanade could we not keep vistas while mitigating noise, air pollution and light spillage? Why do we need a four lane scar along the Fraser River as North Delta’s legacy for a global economy that as British Columbians we have no control over?
Sharing the Burden
On May 27, 2006, I attended the GVRD Mayors and Councillors meeting with Gateway. There, Mayor Wright of New Westminster appealed for local and provincial governments to consider completion of SFP Rd before the proposed truck-route running through his city –the North Fraser Perimeter Road. He sited noise, pollution, congestion and the dampening of development potential on the waterfront. His lobbying efforts are admirable; however, this is very disconcerting for North Delta because the North Fraser truck traffic would be displaced over the Alex Fraser Bridge through North Delta to Port Mann. Until the regional truck traffic is equally shared among routes including the Port Mann and Hwy #1, the North Fraser Perimeter Rd and “the Diagonal,” on behalf of North Delta, I can not accept any SFP Rd proposal until the load is adequately shared.
$3 Billion Gateway and a Deteriorating Commute
The province’s $3 billion prescription will not improve people moving to and from work. Congestion continues to snarl the Alex Fraser in the morning and afternoon rush hour, buses sit idle on 72nd Ave unable to access 112th St to pick up passengers going to work. We have an acute lack of transit south of the Fraser with a Park-n-Ride at Scott Rd Station filled to the brim. The Gateway Program is designing a temporary transportation system for global trade while most of our residents are completely dependent on their cars for commuting bumper to bumper along Nordel Way.
The region has just two-thirds the bus fleet that the GVRD planned for back in 1994, and not a single bus on the Port Mann. Per capita, communities south of the Fraser River within the GVRD have half the transit services as those living on the north side.
The Liberal Government is shoveling money in entirely the wrong direction. Goods and people can move more efficiently while spending less money. Transportation planning and management strategies should be geared towards maximizing our current infrastructure rather than simply building more. Incentives encouraging time management of road usage could spread the load. For example, we have to encourage with financial incentives the use of all-night ferry sailings for truckers in order to get them off the road during peak hours. We also have to designate all-night truck routes thru non-residential neighbourhoods. We need enforceable and severe penalties for engine-braking that disturb residents. University and post-secondary education commuting hours should occur after morning and afternoon peak traffic hours by altering school hours between 10 AM to 8 PM. Seniors should be encouraged to ride transit free between 10 and 3. The 3-zone transit fare should be reduced to the same fee paid for a 2-zone fare. We need more park and rides and security on Skytrain. We need to build transportation systems that are in sync with urban design.
The Myth of Globalization and the Unstoppable South Fraser Perimeter Rd
South Fraser Perimeter Rd will provide a service for trade. Except for a few maintenance jobs, once built it won’t in itself create more jobs. “The Road” may play an important function but it doesn’t produce wealth. Open markets don’t create wealth; they create profits for those who like trading in the money market. The Liberal’s are over-obsession with trade –the movement of goods through the rush to sell oil, gas, and commodities and the importation of manufactured goods from Asia. (Vancouver –based mining companies now are moving investment into China even though it has the most dangerous mining industry in the world, with some 5000 accidents a year.) I don’t believe that the most important deity is the increase of trade running through my neighbourhood. My Gross Domestic Product is based on my quality of life and happiness.
British Columbia is becoming the mercantile Spain of North America. BC’s boom-bust economy is undergoing a new transformation of sell-out, resources exploited in the same way Spain raped Latin America. In the 16th and 17th Century the Spaniards mistook gold and silver as wealth. They had money but didn’t invest with the production side of their economy. In other words, once the bullion was spent, there was nothing left. Other mercantile countries produced goods and in turn they produced wealth. Britain and the Dutch protected their trade and production with tariffs.
The South Fraser Perimeter Rd represents the movement of wealth but there is no evidence that production of goods within BC is Gateway’s $3 billion purpose. In 1973, Vancouver had about 2400 acres of industrial-zoned lands. By 1995 it had dropped to 1,700 acres. Today with a population of 2.5 million people, there are only approximately 2500 manufacturers in the Lower Mainland. Much of Delta’s vacant prime industrial land will become parking-lots for containers; a very non-supportive tax-base indeed.
Mixed land-use in the region is essential because it fits within a diversified economy. In the event of a down-turn, diversification may ensure some retention of stability. Without places to work people have little reason to stay here and would have little income to keep the multiplier continuing. Not only is manufacturing a job creator and major taxpayer it also creates spin-offs in ancillary businesses that support manufacturers with supplies and services.
With or without the SFP Rd, capital is fleeing BC. The manufacturing center of gravity is shifting to China and there is a race to the bottom in labour standards. Work place codes and labour rights in China are very different than here. Does this mean that in order that to compete in the global economy British Columbians must reduce its labour, health or environmental in order to compete? Many economies have said no. After years of misguided endorsement of globalization and privatization, New Zealand is building a mixed economy once again. Helen Clark’s government has re-establishing Air NZ, the rail tracks, created Kiwi-bank and renationalized Worker’s Compensation.
Conclusion
The premise that the four-lane South Fraser Perimeter Rd will unleash waves of trade and these waves would in turn unleash a broad economic tide of growth is false. If we are to sell out to the notion of unrelenting globalization we will have a cargo tsunami that will be unstoppable no matter how many South Fraser Perimeter Roads we build.
If the proponents for global trade believe that the Fraser Valley should be North America’s corridor for trade with what the provincial Liberal claim to be an infinite Chinese and Asia economic capacity, our facilitation will become a never-ending patchwork of concrete and steel from port to Hope, destroying inter-tidal wetlands, farmland, neighbourhoods and the air we breathe. For us living south of the Fraser, the Liberal government’s consumption of global fodder will be the end to a place we call home.
In addition, the need for a South Fraser Perimeter Road is based on mere speculation. As already seen with the Fraser Surrey Docks, after spending 3 million dollars on upgrades, a decision made by a European shipping company to use other ports has resulted in significant job losses. It is quite possible that another decision half way across the world could nullify the need for South Fraser Perimeter Road – especially when there are other more convenient ports of entry such as Prince Rupert.
I do think that the Gateway program in its present format, with its South Fraser Perimeter Rd. destroying North Delta’s foreshore, impacting a neighbourhood caught between the rail tracks to Nordel Way, premised on the notion of trade at all costs, will set a broader course for civilization.
BC Liberals argue with audacity that globalization, privatization and deregulation and trade will take the province in a new positive direction.
British Columbians need to take a closer look.