Hwy 99 Fraser River Tunnel (George Massey Replacement) | Proposed

[Zassk]

Ten years ago, when the various Sea To Sky route options were being presented and debated with open houses, the impression I got was that a Rural Freeway Divided 100 km/h design would be 2x to 3x more expensive than the Arterial 80 km/h that was actually built. Put another way, we could have had a top-of-the-line Sea To Sky highway but no SFPR, or the reverse. It seems unlikely that the province could have afforded the extreme price premium to build both at the higher standard.

My personal feeling is that we got at least 80% of the benefit of a freeway for 40%-50% of the price. I don't like the fact that these two highways were not fully built 100 km/h freeways (nor that there is a large gap on the Sea To Sky left for future build), but I DO like that we were able to build both of them almost at the same time, with no tolls.

If the Coquihalla Freeway is the gold standard, we have to remember that the Coquihalla was the most expensive freeway in the world per km at the time it was built, and that it cost roughly 3x as much as was budgeted, and the only reason it did not financially ruin the province was because of a very expensive toll charged in both directions for 20 years. We cannot build all of our highways to that standard.

The NDP tried it the following decade with the Island Highway through the gentle terrain of their heartland, and discovered that even $2 billion cannot get you a full freeway, at least not if you build it at union labour rates.