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A Gateway to nowhere
by Pierre Rovtar - Letter to Editor •
Monday April 10, 2006 at 10:04 AM
“Gateway is all about improving traffic flows across the river” has got to be the most pathetic boosterist nonsense.
Surrey Leader Letter to the Editor A Gateway to nowhere A letter writer who opposes the Gateway project suggests the reason Vancouver is considered one of the world’s most livable cities is its traditional stance against freeways. Apr 07 2006 Re: Gateway Vision, The Leader, March 31.
You mean nightmare. The op-ed piece from the Langley Times is so wrong. “Gateway is all about improving traffic flows across the river” has got to be the most pathetic boosterist nonsense. Let me tell you what Gateway is really all about. It’s about aggrandizing the wealth of already wealthy people. What the heck is better about an eight-lane freeway in gridlock as opposed to a four-lane freeway in gridlock?
Then there is the “That was then, this is now” statement that pooh-poohed the anti-freeway activists that stopped the Vancouver freeway plans of the ’60s and ’70s. This shows a total lack of understanding that it is even more critical that we stop our destructive fixation on road expansion today than it was then. We now have so much more information on the true costs of road expansion that to make such a dismissive statement verges on irresponsibility. Loss of agricultural production due to air pollution; loss of critical agricultural land to speculators planning to benefit from more road access; asthma rates in our children that have risen from one in 20 to one in five over the last two decades; and global warming that is destroying our salmon and our forests – these are just a few examples of how we’re learning what road expansion is doing to this special place. But the worst failure is ignoring that urban planners from all over the world point to Vancouver’s success as one of the world’s most livable cities as being a direct result of the defeat of the freeway lobby. The people of Surrey and Langley deserve livability at least as much as Vancouverites. Pierre Rovtar
Surrey
surreyleader.com/
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