The traffic woes facing our city are no secret, nor is the fact that people are worn out and fed up, but I can't help but be amused at the assertions of some city council and mayoral candidates that their "leadership skills" or "having what it takes" or "working smarter" are somehow going to magically solve the problem, while being dismissive of the governance process as so much red tape and a waste of time. Such sentiments may sound good in a campaign ad, but in reality they are naïve, dangerously simplistic and will only lead us down the garden path to nowhere.
Just how, exactly, would "leadership" make any difference, and what does "working smarter" mean in real, practical terms? None who claim the value of these vague generalities is able to say with any degree of clarity.
Perhaps it is because, as anyone who's been involved in the process or paid even a modicum of attention to the issue over the past number of years could tell you, the solutions we seek lie largely outside the city's control - with TransLink and the provincial government - and simplistic clichés simply aren't going to get us anywhere. Nor is walking into the offices of TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis or Transportation Minister Todd Stone and demanding action, which is the sort of strategy implied by some candidates' bold language that they are the ones who will finally solve the problem. LOL, as they say.
For the past two years, I have sat on the executive of the Queen's Park Residents' Association (QPRA), as well as the city's neighborhood traffic advisory committee as the QPRA's representative. I have also attended TransLink and city open houses on matters such as the Patullo Bridge and our master transportation plan.
I have listened, asked questions and learned, and it is patently clear to me that the only reasons that we don't have a six-lane Patullo bridge being built right now and on our way to carrying even more of the region's traffic load than we already do, are first that the community stood up to say "no," and second that the city's engineering staff and forward thinkers like Jonathan Cote, Jaimie McEvoy and Patrick Johnstone have spent countless, hard-working hours working within the established, agreed governance process to get real results.
It may not be sexy, but it's working.
Did those who believe that there is a quick fix fail to notice the recent decision by TransLink to support the city's reasonable proposal for a four-lane, tolled Patullo replacement? How do they think that happened? Like the war on drugs, "just say no" was never going to get the result we needed.
It would have resulted in higher levels of government simply imposing their choice on our community.
At the same time, neither were platitudes like "leadership" nor "working smarter" going to produce desirable results.
We needed to show that we were willing to work collaboratively to develop a viable, realistic and fair alternative.
We did that, and now we have shared, multi-lateral support for a reasonable proposal.
One cannot understate what a huge milestone that is for our small city, and it wasn't achieved with tired clichés, it was achieved by working within the process that all of the government players in the region have agreed to.
If we're going to get what we want, we're going to need friends and show that we're a team player.
I remember sitting in a packed auditorium at the Justice Institute a couple of years ago listening to speaker after speaker at the open mike make it clear what we didn't want in this city: no six-lane bridge; no more traffic!
And I remember a certain local resident and now first-time council candidate as the lone voice suggesting, to the contrary, that we had a responsibility to be more accommodating of our neighbours' needs.
One wonders, with that kind of "leadership," what the results would have been for our community?
Berril Perks is a New Westminster resident.
