Fraser River works as transport route
Environmental impact less when containers put on barges
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Original article

VPO note - the NDP under Glen Clark ended up wasting millions of BC taxpayer dollars in the 1990’s on the FastCat ferries, and took heat for it from the Liberals. But now those same Liberals are about to waste BILLIONS of BC taxpayer dollars on the Gateway project just when people are finally starting to drive less, and cheaper alternatives like barges & rail - that are better for our future - are available. See our FAQ on VPO’s Gateway 2.0 proposal.

VPO considers this a scandal, if there’s any meaning to the word.

A report commissioned by local port authorities but virtually ignored by the B.C. government for more than three years now raises serious doubts about the economic viability of building the $1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road.

In fact, the holes it opens in the so-called rationale for this 40-kilometre, four-lane truck freeway through Delta farmland and Burns Bog are large enough to drive an 18-wheel container truck through.

Perhaps its biggest flaw is Victoria’s failure to look seriously at alternatives for moving more shipping containers to and from an expanding Deltaport at Roberts Bank.

One alternative is to move more shipping containers through Deltaport in the same way both First Nations and the early European settlers moved goods — by using the Fraser River.

As the 112-page report by Novacorp International concluded in 2005, it is economically feasible to transfer huge numbers of containers to and from container ships at Roberts Bank by using Fraser River barges for ongoing distribution via rail or truck well outside the Greater Vancouver core.

A barge carrying up to 500 containers and towed by one tug is far more cost effective and environmentally friendly than 500 trucks carrying one container each, then driving through farms and communities south of the lower Fraser.

This report is now being circulated, thanks to MLA Guy Gentner (NDP-Delta North), who drew on its contents during his rebuttal of the B.C. government’s recent acceptance of its Environmental Assessment Office’s review and green light on the project.

As Gentner says, the SFPR is an obsolete, 20-year-old idea being rammed down taxpayer throats in today’s fast-changing world where very high fuel costs and strong concerns about pollution trump the old-fashioned “rubber-on-the-road” shipping solutions.

“It [the SFPR] is, in fact, the most expensive and environmentally damaging option that the Campbell government could have chosen,” he says.

Unbelievably, he points out, the Environmental Assessment Office’s review gave just a scant six lines in its 138-page report to the river option called “short sea shipping,” which is widely used in Europe and elsewhere.

For one thing, the Novacorp study looked at delivery costs compared to transporting goods by road and found that the economics of short sea shipping do indeed work.

Key executives within the port authority are also on the record for having spoken very favourably about the benefits of short sea shipping.

And environmentalists should absolutely love the concept because the Novacorp study found, for example, that there would be a 277-per-cent reduction in emissions in moving 200 containers by barge from Roberts Bank to Fraser Surrey Docks rather than by truck on the SFPR.

“The assessment office ran rough-shod over community concerns, environmental impacts and economic alternatives,” Gentner claims.

Finally, short of SFPR opponents asking for a judicial review, Gentner says that, if his party wins next May’s provincial election, it will take a second look at the SFPR project, before its construction begins later in 2009.