Gateway Impacts
Traffic Gridlock
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Building expanded roads and bridges to make more room for cars always attracts more cars, filling up the new
space and causing the same gridlock on a larger scale. Most bridges fill up again within 5 years of being
built. If this happens, we will have spent billions to create an even bigger traffic problem than we have now.
Huge Costs to Taxpayers
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The Gateway Project is slated to cost at least $3 Billion. This huge sum of money is considered to be a
low estimate: construction costs in the Lower Mainland are expected to go up 55% in the next 5 years,
which would bring the total closer to $4.5 billion. (Think of the 2010 Olympic cost overruns). Such
expenditures will either result in a larger provincial debt or it will require the provincial government
to sell off the bridges and roads to a private operator who will then charge the citizens to use them.
Either way it’s the local citizens who will be paying for Gateway for decades to come.
Destruction of Internationally-Significant Wildlife Habitat
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Port expansion would have a direct effect on the Fraser River estuary, the mouth of the world’s largest
salmon river and an area of incredible biodiversity. Dredging and land-filling of the rich tidal mud flats
at Roberts Bank will negatively impact marine life, including sea birds, salmon and resident orca whales.
Loss of Farmland
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Gateway highway expansion plans, especially by the South Fraser Perimeter Road and Deltaport expansion,
will pave over farmland and ALR lands. Indirect effects from highway expansion would include increased
development pressure on farmland across the Lower Mainland, threatening local food security, production
and quality.
Air Pollution and Chronic Health Problems
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Port and road expansion will dramatically increase marine, car and truck emissions in the Lower Mainland
airshed, leading to higher levels of childhood asthma, and decreased lung function and cancer. Due to
prevailing winds, the eastern Fraser Valley would be especially hard hit.
Loss of Quality of Life
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Vancouver is routinely listed among the top cities to live in the world. In 1996, the GVRD drafted the
Liveable Region Strategic Plan (LRSP), an innovative and world-renowned land-use plan that attempts to
balance growth with sustainability. The transit-first principles of the LRSP are going to be run
over the highways of the Gateway Project. Gateway will increase pressure on municipal councils to become
more car-focussed, increasing urban sprawl and ignoring sustainable transit alternatives.
