Sarah J. Blige

On April 26, 2009, I joined around 125 others in a three-hour trek across the Alex Fraser bridge and into Burns Bog for the annual pilgrimage to raise awareness about the effect the proposed Gateway Project would have on the community’s beloved bog. But I learned that the pilgrimage was about more than just saving a bog; it was also about opposing an environmentally unfriendly and fiscally mismanaged major highway expansion in the Lower Mainland.

The Gateway Project, unveiled by Premier Gordon Campbell in January of 2006,  is a major road construction plan across the Lower Mainland aimed at expanding and opening BC’s transportation network, improving the flow of goods and people throughout the area. The project has a projected cost of $3 – $4billion dollars, and consists of three major road and bridge development projects: the Port Man/Highway 1 Project (PMH1), the South Fraser Perimeter Road Project (SFPR) and the North Fraser Perimeter Road Project (NFPR). 

The Burns Bog Conservation Society, which led this Pilgrimage, was particularly concerned with the SFPR, as this part of the project would have a direct effect on Burns Bog. The BC Ministry of Transportation website describes the SFPR Project: “Approximately 40km long, the South Fraser Perimeter Road will be a new four-lane, 80km/hr route along the south side of the Fraser River beginning at Delaport Way in Southwest Delta to 176 Street in Surrey…The SFPR will offer goods movers an efficient transportation corridor while helping to reduce the volume of through-traffic and trucks on community streets.” Completion of the program is estimated for 2012. 

Burns Bog is often referred to as “the lungs of the Lower Mainland” and is now internationally recognized as an endangered habitat, thanks to the SFPR Project. This part of the Gateway Project is planned to plow right through the ecologically important bog to make way for the four-lane highway, which will increase automobile emissions and likely make our roads even more congested than they are now, according to a transportation research study conducted in January 2000. (Opponents to this plan offer highly-congested urban areas in the US, such as Los Angeles, as examples of the ways in which highway expansion increases traffic on the roads.) 

They highway expansion and bridge building program will most certainly increase flow of goods and people through the Lower Mainland, but whether the multi-billion dollar project is a wise long-term investment in our sagging economy is another question. 

The Metro Vancouver Region is in desperate need of a public transit facelift – an expenditure I’d happily donate my tax dollars to – though the provincial government feels highway expansion in the Lower Mainland is a more pressing investment than is transit expansion, despite ongoing public outcry to reevaluate BC transportation priorities.  What Metro Vancouver needs is a more efficient transit system with more bus lines throughout the area, extended hours of SkyTrain operation and expansion of the existing SkyTrain lines into the tri-cities, North and West Vancouver and Richmond. Other more cost-effective solutions to transit difficulties in the Lower Mainland include more SkyTrain cars travelling into Surrey, increased express buses across the Port Mann Bridge, and the implementation of a light-rail train system on existing freight railways lines that are currently rarely used.

The Gateway Project is both fiscally and environmentally irresponsible, as the infrastructure development plan will destroy miles of ecologically important natural bog land, significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions in the Lower Mainland (by 31%, as projected by The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) and cause toxic runoffs from chemical spills to collect in bog-side ditches. 

Opponents of the Gateway Project argue that the real motivation behind the proposed highway infrastructure improvements is to increase international trade, particularly with China, which has extremely lax human rights and environmental laws. The Gateway Project apparently stemmed from the Pacific Gateway Act, and was inspired by industry lobbyists. The debrief of the Act states: “For over 10 years, committed stakeholders in the transport sector have advocated and worked toward a more integrated approach that addresses interconnections and synergies among policy and investment issues across all modes of transportation on Canada’s west coast. The Pacific Gateway Strategy seeks to build on those efforts, and takes the concept even further.” And the lobby grouped that inspired this act has become a government agency with an enormous budget to do with what they please. 

Ultimately, the Gateway Project would benefit big business in the short-term, increase exports from Canada thereby increasing resource extraction, and have an ecological impact of massive and irreversible proportions. Visit http://gatewaysucks.org  or http://www.burnsbog.org for more information on the economic and environmental impact of the Gateway Project, and check out the video below that was made by my wonderfully talented Flint.