🚀 go-pugleaf

I lived in Maple Ridge from 1979 to 1993.  I have lived the last two 
years in Kitsilano

The Westcoast Express will simply return commuting times to what they 
were ten years ago, though not to what they were 15 years ago.  
CP Rail shoud have been prevailed upon by our Liberal MPs to 
provide better track times (Why do you think that didn't 
happen???)  An expanded freeway and highway system, with dedicated HOV 
lanes as well as fixed rail systems are needed to solve the 
transportation problems of Metro Vancouver.  Peak load tolls on major 
crossing should be reimposed.  People have to be honest, and realize that 
we all need and want our cars for trips out of the city and to 
destinations not served by transit.  We also have to be prepare to pay 
for them.

Some people from other cities, where reason and common sense normally 
prevail, find it hard to understand the backward attitude of 
Vancouverites towards any sensible infrastructure investment, whether its 
the Lions Gate bridge replacement, the Grandview connector, the Arbutus 
rail line, the selection of 50 mph rolling stock for the SkyTrain, or any 
one of a number of other seemingly inexplicable decisions.  They 
obviously don't understand the the game in this city is to use local and 
provincial public policies, that is land use zoning and transportation 
planning, to contrive scarcities in urban land and to thereby escalate 
urban land prices as far and as fast as possible.  It's 
conspiratorial, parochial, petty politics at its worst, involving both 
COPE and NPA and their senior government counterparts, in a game of 
Monopoly with real money on the table.

How else does one explain the fact that housing prices in Vancouver are 
50% higher than in Toronto when we have less than half the population and 
far fewer high salaried, head office jobs?

Rod Smelser