Gateway Freeways

The biggest part of the Gateway megaproject is a massive expansion of highways and freeways across Greater Vancouver. The BC government plans to spend billions on Los Angeles-style freeways which would:

• Destroy important salmon habitat and potential parkland along the Fraser River
• Cause immediate traffic chaos during construction, and increase congestion over the long term
• Encourage sprawling, car-dependent development including big-box stores on agricultural land
• Increase air pollution and smog, exacerbating health problems such as cancer and asthma
• Increase greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change
• Reduce funds available for public transit and other priorities.

Extensive studies show that widened highways encourage sprawling development and increase the number of trips made by car. Traffic volume increases and new lanes quickly fill up. Within a few years, congestion is worse than before as the region becomes more car dependent. The Alex Fraser Bridge, built to combat congestion on Highways 1 and 99, was expected to take seven years to reach capacity. It was congested within nine months and has remained that way.

The immediate plans include:

• The South Fraser Perimeter Road. This is an entirely new highway proposed for the south bank of the Fraser River and through Delta farmland for Deltaport Way (see map above). It is estimated to cost in the neighbourhood of $1.5-billion. Some preliminary ‘preload’ work (piling up of sand to compress boggy land) has begun, but no major construction has been started.
• The Highway 1/Port Mann Bridge expansion is a $3.3-billion scheme to create Greater Vancouver’s first Los Angeles-scale mega freeway. The wider sections will be 10 to 12 lanes wide, including a mega-freeway bridge at least 10 lanes wide. Significant work has started on this part of Gateway, but many freeway projects have been stopped by public opposition when partially constructed, as evidenced by the Georgia Viaduct in Vancouver which was originally supposed to be a four miles long elevated freeway (it is less than a mile long).

The North Fraser Perimeter Road is a proposal to push a major freeway through downtown New Westminster. It is the next planned stage of Gateway freeway expansions.

Recently, after much public opposition to the Gateway freeway expansion scheme, the provincial government announced the permanent cancellation of the second phase of Gateway - the expansion of Highway 99 and a new crossing adjacent to the Massey Tunnel. This Gateway freeway expansion was replaced with inexpensive bus lanes to allow transit buses to avoid congestion on Highway 99.