Metro Vancouver freeway expansion gets ongoing opposition

Metro Vancouver residents gathered on the beautiful banks of the Fraser River in Delta on Victoria Day May 24th to express opposition to a proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road. (SFPR).

Organized by the Sunbury Neighbourhood Association as a Garden Party and Paint-In, citizens painted banners, waved to passing motorists and shared their personal stories of housing demolitions and questionable government actions on the freeway project.

“The government claims they do not have money for teachers, seniors, health care or public transit,” says Richelle Giberson, a Sunbury Neighbourhood Association member, “yet they plan to spend an estimated 1.3 billion dollars on a waterfront freeway. This really makes me question what our government’s priorities are.”

“This beautiful and historic waterfront site is our local frontline in the struggle to stop global warming. Building a new four-lane freeway when transit projects are being delayed for lack of funding violates the Liberals’ legislated commitment to reduce greenhouse gases 33 per cent by 2020. Making a waterfront park in our neighbourhood instead of a waterfront freeway is our way of thinking globally and acting locally,” says Sunbury Neighbourhood Association member Ernie Baatz.

“ To say this community along River Road (10300 block) has been destroyed would be an understatement,” says Delta resident and protest participant Doug Reynolds. “About a hundred livable homes have either been demolished or are slated to be bulldozed. Families have been uprooted and displaced. It’s truly shocking what the massive scale of this Gateway South Fraser Perimeter Road is doing to communities like Delta."

"It’s even more shocking to see that this expensive mega-project will see a 4-lane highway built specifically for trucks, and it is being constructed in areas such as Sunbury, right along a rail line," adds Reynolds. "Is rail transport not a more environmentally-friendly and more economical transport option? And why have mayors like Delta Mayor Jackson, who is Chair of Metro Vancouver, (a regional planning body that claims to be green) not been more vocal to stop or reconfigure this needless destruction of land and lives.” 

U.S. states like Virginia are recognizing that “the age of go-go highway construction is over.”  In a Richmond Times-Dispatch article, March 2010, Thelma Drake, director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation comments: “One train will take 300 trucks off the road. We can't just build roads. We can't afford to build them, particularly because of heightened environmental and land-use concerns.”

The battle to stop the Delta freeway project has been unrelenting. Freeway opponents point out the irony of having the City of Vancouver Mayor Robertson promoting electric cars, expanded bike lanes and streetcar revival, while suburban communities like Delta are being torn apart for expanded freeways.

And why should all BC residents be concerned about this project? How about wasteful public tax dollars, betrayal of “green” transportation options to carry consumer goods to a store right in your own neighbourhood, along with loss of fertile BC farmland.

North America has many examples of citizens successfully stopping freeways. The San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway was halted after citizen protests in 1959. A freeway that was set to slice through Vancouver’s Chinatown was stopped by residents’ opposition. For more information and to get involved, read about some of the actions recently organized by freeway opponents.

Photos from Sunbury Victoria Day Garden Party  freeway protest

Climate Action pilgrimage

Loss of farmland to a freeway

Sunbury Neighbourhood Association  

Also read about the protests and scandals related to recent highway expansion in Texas.