Gateway project WILL impact air quality

by Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

British Columbia's ambitious Gateway freeway expansion plan will fuel population and traffic growth in the Fraser Valley with unpredictable implications for air quality in the Lower Mainland, a Metro Vancouver official says...

Regional district division manager Roger Quan said today a provincial environmental impact report that predicts "negligible" impacts on air quality fails to take into account the growth that could result from the Gateway project itself.

Officials at the Metro Vancouver regional district - formerly known as the GVRD - say unknown variables in the province's environmental assessment are simply too big to support the report's conclusion that air quality would not be affected by the freeway project.

The government's basic assumptions and methodology have been the subject of considerable wrangling between Gateway officials and the regional district since late in 2006, said Quan.

The ministry agreed to change its methodology to better reflect the regional district's observations about fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and issued an update in July.

The new projections show a 28-per-cent increase in the number of kilometres driven in the lower Fraser Valley by 2021, if the Gateway project goes ahead. Without the freeway expansion, the report assumes a 25-per-cent increase over the same period.

But a Metro Vancouver assessment of the province's numbers suggests the $3-billion project will likely fuel "significant" population and traffic growth in the Fraser Valley, and that effect is not accounted for in the province's scenario.

Gateway includes widening Highway 1 from Vancouver to Langley, twinning the Port Mann Bridge and building truck routes on both sides of the Fraser River.

"The Gateway folks are assuming that the number of cars would be the same with or without Gateway," said NDP environment critic Shane Simpson. "The regional district is saying quite rightly that it will change land-use patterns and it will change the volume of cars.

"That has been the case in other places that have done major roadway expansions," he said. "There's no sense of that in these numbers."

Mike Proudfoot, executive director of the Gateway project, says that while the growth projections of local governments do not include the impacts of Gateway, that is what the provincial government brings to the table.

"Our conclusion through the environmental assessment process is that air quality is going to improve by 2020 and that health effects from GHG emissions will drop," he said.

Recent government initiatives, including the adoption of California tailpipe-emission standards and clean-air retrofits for commercial trucks, "will only improve the situation," Proudfoot said.

Quan remains skeptical. Changes in land-use patterns, fuel consumption and emissions, and increased traffic associated with freeway expansion remain huge unknowns.

"[Gateway] bases their future traffic estimates on regional growth strategies developed by Metro Vancouver," said Quan. "But none of those growth scenarios included the impact of Gateway.

"New emission standards could bring GHG emissions down, but the net effect is impossible to know," Quan said.

The Gateway expansion includes dedicated on-ramps for transit vehicles, which will allow buses to begin using the Port Mann Bridge for the first time in 20 years, but Simpson doubts that a major highway expansion will encourage people to leave their cars at home and take the bus.

The government of B.C. has a stated goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent by 2020.

"I don't see how that squares with this project," Simpson said.

rshore@png.canwest.com

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