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Originally Posted by bingun
He's got to be winding people up with promises like that? Maybe he should include building Envision's tunnel under the harbour or a bridge to the Kingston Peninsula while he's at it.
It's scary that someone like that got 5% of the vote! Although I assume the number of votes was very low if it was a by-election.
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Let's go!
Tunnels generally have much lower long term maintenance costs than bridges or ferries, and are typically designed to last far longer. I believe the last time Sailor tried to argue against the idea in general, he used the $1 billion price tag to refurbish a 1km in Montreal as evidence against a tunnel under SJ Harbour costing too much money to be feasible. Yet, the price tag to demolish Olympic Stadium is over $2 billion, so Montreal is probably a really bad city to compare Saint John with.
Meanwhile in the Faroe Islands 🇫🇴:
"
Subsea tunnels in the Faroe Islands have been constructed at costs ranging from approximately €15 million to over €23.5 million per kilometer (roughly £10 million to £20 million per km). The projects are highly specialized, often involving complex engineering through volcanic rock, and are funded via tolls, with costs sometimes compared favorably to, or even lower than, comparable infrastructure projects in other regions."
Angus MacNeil: Faroe Islands show worth of undersea tunnels
The Faroe Islands have made smart use of undersea tunnels
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Two of these tunnels – which replaced ferries – were completed before 2007 [...] The third, the Eysturoy Tunnel, was opened in December 2020, with a roundabout 70m under the North Atlantic, where three roads in sub-tunnels meet. The combined tunnelling length is 11km. The cost was a billion DKK – or £10.2 million per km. This tunnel was less than half the price of the CMAL ferry hulks on the Clyde. Tunnels, clearly, are do-able and sensible to build in Scotland too.
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Again, people on these forums are quick to call something a billion dollar boondoggle, but are very slow to back up those claims with facts and figures that prove they know what they are talking about.
The Faroe Islands has around 55,000 people and over 40km of undersea and mountain tunnels. Their undersea tunnels will eventually replace their ferries altogether, and be more effective for the people of the Faroe Island in the long run, while massively enhancing their transportation capabilities.
The Saint John Region has nearly three times the population of the Faroe islands, and no such radically different geography and geology.
The Faroese have built their undersea tunnels for a cost of around $19 million CAD per KM. I see no reason why the New Brunswick Department of Transportation and Infrastructure wouldn't take a serious look at building a tunnel between the Lower West Side and Uptown Saint John, to take some congestion away from the bridges, and radically enhance the connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists between the West Side and Uptown.
As much as I'd personally like to see the return of the Saint John Harbour Ferry, I think a harbour tunnel would probably cost far less than a ferry in the long run. (And would be a better solution for West Siders looking to walk home from the bars Uptown, and same thing for a Harbour Bridge pathway, since a ferry wouldn’t run all night)
Beyond the NB DTI, I think the federal government should seriously look at how tunnel projects could be used to improve connectivity between Port Saint John's facilities in the inner harbour, or even be used as some sort of underground cold storage or temperature controlled storage facility for the container port. A lot of earth and rock would need to be moved to build a few tunnels between the West Side Docks and the Lower Cove Terminal, and I think a lot of that bedrock and earth could then be repurposed as part of land reclamation projects in the inner harbour... like filling in the space between the tugboat and that decrepit old pier.
Anyways, haven't actually thought about the tunnel idea in a while, but do hope tunnels somehow become an election issue.
I think people should try and provide evidence that it would cost too much money, before they simply write off the idea entirely...
I think a candidate could actually drum up a lot of press and attention if they tried to have a conversation or debate around the idea of a "ferry vs tunnel ". The connectivity between the West Side and Uptown is abysmal for two areas so close to each other, and further upgrades to the existing Harbour Passage system won't do anything to change that.
As far as I see it, there's only three viable active transportation solutions to better connect the West Side and Uptown (Central) Peninsulas, and those are #1 a ferry, #2 a harbour bridge pathway, and #3 a tunnel. More busses between the West Side and Uptown would be good too, but that doesn't exactly help cyclists, or people that simply want to walk.
If a mayoral candidate and/or city council candidate really pushed for big, costly solutions for improving connectivity between the West Side and Uptown for via a ferry, tunnel, or Harbour Bridge pathway, I think they would get a lot of support. I'd say the current mayor and council are seen by most West Siders as extremely focussed on Uptown and more recently the North End, and not very focussed on improving the situation here on West Side.
Sometimes you have to think about what this city is like for people visiting the city without a car... and I'm sorry to say, visiting Saint John without a car (like I used to do when I visited my grandparents on the West Side) is pretty dreadful. Many resident focussed investments end up being good for tourism, and vice versa.
One active transportation piece I'd really like to see candidates get behind (and I hope others here on the forum could get behind) is bike sharing/rental stations!
A tunnel would obviously be too much for the
municipal budget, but a bike rental system could very well be viable. Moreover, bike sharing systems typically qualify for robust federal and provincial funding, and are good dual purpose investment that is good for both residents
and tourists. If we ever people to stop complaining about "empty bike lanes", then let's start supporting some sensible solutions to fill those bike lanes up with bikes! It costs like $20-30+ an hour to rent an e-scooters and e-bikes in Saint John... those are
tourist trap prices, not resident focussed prices, which is what we need to really fill up those bike lanes.
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