BC Liberals promise to bring back original bridge plan to replace Massey Tunnel

Artistic rendering of the original cancelled plan for a 10-lane bridge replacing the George Massey Tunnel. (Government of BC)

The new party leader of the BC Liberals has made a major 2024 election platform commitment to revert the George Massey Tunnel replacement project to its initial concept, before the original 10-lane bridge project was cancelled by the current BC NDP-led provincial government. Unlike the original plan, there would be no tolls if the 10-lane bridge concept were to return.

Kevin Falcon says bringing back the original bridge project, which was mere months away from starting major construction in 2017, would be faster and less risky than the current plan of building an eight-lane immersed tunnel on the Fraser River’s bed.

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The BC NDP’s immersed tunnel requires a new environmental assessment (EA) approval, which is a process that began earlier this year and is expected to take about two years, with the decision expected to be made sometime in 2024.

Late last month, an early public consultation phase of the EA process began to seek public input on how the public wants to be consulted throughout the EA process.

“The NDP tunnel proposal will have to go through an extensive environmental assessment process starting from scratch. One can only imagine how long this will take (years for sure) given the impact of dropping eight concrete tubes into the Fraser River with all the attendant impact to flora/fauna, not to mention salmon and sturgeon,” said Falcon in a statement to Daily Hive Urbanized.

Highly preliminary conceptual artistic rendering of an immersed-tube tunnel replacement for the George Massey Tunnel. (Government of BC)

He says the EA process could be tied up with the likely provincial election in 2024, and the project will cost “way more and take way longer than they are suggesting.” In August 2021, the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure pegged the immersed tunnel at a cost of $4.15 billion, with construction starting in 2026 for completion in 2030.

He asserts the true costs of the immersed tunnel are not known, as the business plan released last year was so heavily redacted that it did not make public useful details and direct comparisons of the various cost components between the immersed tunnel and a narrower eight-lane bridge concept.

It was only revealed that an alternative eight-lane bridge concept — instead of the original 10-lane bridge or eight-lane immersed tunnel — would cost an estimated $4.22 billion, about $70 million more than the immersed tunnel. But it would be ready for use two years earlier, with construction starting sooner in 2024 for completion in 2028. Both of the BC NDP’s eight-lane concepts for an immersed tunnel or bridge are also untolled.

Artistic rendering of the new 10-lane bridge to replace the George Massey Tunnel. (Government of BC)

Falcon suggests the extent of the redactions in the public version of the business case answers whether choosing an immersed tunnel was sensible or not.

With the original bridge project, Falcon said its EA approval was received in under one year, and it almost has no environmental impact on the river given that it goes over it. He claims it will take only one year at the most to update the previously completed studies and receive a new EA approval on the original bridge project.

“The bridge detailed drawings, design work and engineering work are already completed and we can move quickly to the procurement process while we update the EA work,” he said.

In 2017, the BC Liberals-led provincial government was very close to completing the original bridge project’s procurement process of selecting a contractor. One bid was a fixed price contract at $2.6 billion, which is $900 million below the $3.5 billion budget allocated to the project in the provincial capital plan. This bridge was scheduled to open in 2022.

This fixed-price contract included not only the new 10-lane bridge and decommissioning of the existing four-lane tunnel, but also highly extensive Highway 99 upgrades from the south end of the Oak Street Bridge in Richmond to the Delta/Surrey border, major new interchanges, two lanes for bus rapid transit, and a grade-separated bus lane flyover for both directions between Highway 99 and SkyTrain Bridgeport Station.

cancelled george massey bridge cancelled

Artistic rendering of the Highway 99 improvements, including bus lanes and a Highway 17a interchange bus stop, for the cancelled 10-lane George Massey Bridge project. (Government of BC)

Artistic rendering of the Highway 99 improvements, including bus lanes and a Highway 17a interchange bus stop, for the cancelled 10-lane George Massey Bridge project. (Government of BC)

The original bridge would also have been engineered to allow for a future rail rapid transit crossing in the future. This is not planned for the immersed tunnel.

With the original 10-lane bridge project, each direction would have four lanes for general traffic, plus two lanes for buses. The eight-lane immersed tunnel concept provides three lanes for general traffic in each direction, which is the same as what exists today when the counterflow is in place.

The BC NDP has previously argued that the scope of these transit investments has a poor cost-benefit ratio in their economic analysis performed as part of their business case arriving at the immersed tunnel.

Instead, since early this year, they have been proceeding with widening the shoulder lanes of Highway 99 to accommodate extended bus lanes along the corridor, as part of the immersed tunnel project’s budget.

Construction also began in February on a significantly scaled-back bus connection between Bridgeport Station and Highway 99, with a new $5 million surface-level, bus-only roadway establishing improved connections southbound from Bridgeport Road to the highway.

This summer, construction will begin on a downsized concept for the new five-lane interchange at Steveston Highway, which is budgeted at $88 million. It is slated for completion in 2025.

Artistic rendering of the new eight-lane immersed tunnel replacement for the George Massey Tunnel. (Government of BC)

Artistic rendering of the new eight-lane immersed tunnel replacement for the George Massey Tunnel. (Government of BC)

The scaled-back interchange concept is partially due to the City of Richmond’s opposition to the previous concept of a much larger three-level flyover interchange at Steveston Highway. The municipality was also particularly concerned with the additional vehicle traffic the previous larger highway, interchanges, and bridge concepts would bring to their jurisdiction.

Before arriving at the decision to plan for an eight-lane immersed tunnel, shortly after the 2017 election, the BC NDP-led provincial government initiated a consultation process directly with the mayors of the municipal governments along the project corridor. This was in response to previous criticism from the region’s mayors — they were opposed to the 10-lane bridge, the extent of the highway corridor upgrades, and did not feel their municipalities were properly consulted. In 2019, the mayors formally recommended an eight-lane immersed tunnel to the provincial government.

But Falcon argues that during his tenure in the 2000s as the BC Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, the mayors were also opposed to the Canada Line, which nearly did not get built due to political infighting between regional mayors and councillors in the old TransLink board.

The mayors also wanted a street-level LRT for the Evergreen Line at a comparable cost to SkyTrain. After conducting a business case that produced favourable findings, the provincial government intervened and reverted the Evergreen Line back to an extension of the existing SkyTrain system given its higher benefits.

There was also opposition to the Sea to Sky Highway upgrade, new replacement Port Mann Bridge, and new South Fraser Perimeter Road.

“The issue of some mayors opposing it… I understand that and most of the major projects I built had local mayors opposing them for one reason or another; however my job as a provincial leader is to think about the regional and provincial interests, and often that differs from the more narrow interests of local mayors,” said Falcon.

“None of the projects previously cited would have been built had I listened to the objections of local mayors.”

george massey tunnel bridge replacement 2019

2019 artistic rendering of the new 8-lane bridge concept for the George Massey Tunnel replacement. (Government of BC)

In response to Falcon’s comments on pivoting back to the original 10-lane bridge project, the BC NDP has fired back, arguing that it would further delay the replacement of the old, seismically vulnerable tunnel. They suggest it would require a new EA approval and take nine years to complete, with the EA process starting in 2024 and the bridge reaching completion in 2033.

The BC NDP state Falcon’s approach would write off millions of dollars that has already been committed to working on the immersed tunnel. However, the BC NDP did the exact same in 2017 when they cancelled the original bridge project, as about $100 million had already been spent on pre-construction activities such as site preparation.

“In addition to delaying a solution by years, Kevin Falcon is rejecting the consensus reached by community leaders that the tunnel is right for Richmond,” said Henry Yao, the BC NDP MLA for Richmond South Centre, in a statement. “The tunnel is the right fit because it fixes the gridlock while avoiding the negative impacts that would be created by the BC Liberal bridge.”

Kelly Greene, the BC NDP MLA for Richmond-Steveston, added: “If Kevin Falcon consulted anyone at all, he would know that people in our community want the tunnel. His delayed bridge project would be terrible for people in Richmond.”

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