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Kelowna's Bridge to Where?

Monument to the car already looks out of date to some.

Adrian Nieoczym 27 May 2008TheTyee.ca

Adrian Nieoczym is a reporter with the Kelowna Capital News.

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Festivities at Sunday's bridge opening. Photo Karma Lacoff.

Kelowna is a place built around the automobile.

The city's main drag, Harvey Avenue, is really just a section of Highway 97 with strip malls, parking lots and hotels crammed along either side.

Yet even as a new bridge opened here to much fanfare, the city's mayor mused that "building new roads" is not the "answer" to creating a sustainable future for Kelowna. She seemed to reflect a growing realization that the car can't reign supreme for long in a region that prides itself on quality of life amidst natural splendour.

Set in a paradisiacal valley next to awe-inspiring Okanagan Lake, Kelowna is experiencing rapid population growth. It has gone from 9,000 people 50 years ago to more than 110,000 today. When the surrounding communities are taken into account, the Kelowna area has over 170,000 people living in it.

Development here has so far been a sprawling affair, accompanied by a never ending need to accommodate higher and higher traffic volumes in and out of the valley.

Bridging the past

Probably the most significant infrastructure project for stimulating the region's growth was the building of Okanagan Lake Bridge. It was opened in regal fashion by Princess Margaret and Premier W.A.C. Bennett during B.C.'s centennial celebrations on July 19, 1958. One of only three floating concrete bridges in the world, the engineering marvel connected Kelowna to the west side of the lake by road. Before the bridge, the crossing was serviced by ferries.

As current Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon put it, "The bridge really symbolized the growth of the Okanagan and Kelowna in particular." But in recent years, the bridge has come to be more a symbol of frustration as legendary traffic jams became routine. As successive governments promised to address the bottleneck without taking action, the bridge also became a symbol of the region's neglect by government.

But no more. In another grand celebration, Premier Gordon Campbell opened the bridge's state-of-the-art replacement on Sunday. The new bridge is named after former Socred premier William R. (Bill) Bennett, who was responsible for the Coquihalla Highway, another key transportation project in the area, and who is also W.A.C's son. The Bennett dynasty is the closest thing the Okanagan has to local royalty.

Sunday's $140,000 party with Bill Bennett as the guest of honour was designed to deliver maximum propaganda benefits to the Campbell government. Much was made of the fact the new bridge opened almost exactly 50 years after the first one, this time with the province celebrating its 150th anniversary.

Thousands packed into City Park to give Bill Bennett, now 76 years old, a hero's reception and to watch Falcon and Campbell bask in the glory of a major infrastructure project coming in on budget and 108 days ahead of schedule.

Campbell was quick to point to the bridge as vindication of his government's strategy of using public-private partnerships to build public projects

"There were people that said, 'why would we do a public-private partnership?' You save money and you get a bridge 108 days early. That's why you do public-private-partnerships," he declared from the stage.

Private concerns

Despite the premier's glee, there are important tests of the public-private partnership yet to come. The contractor, SNC-Lavalin, doesn't start getting its payments of about $20 million a year until after the bridge is open, so it had a financial incentive to wrap-up construction early. But it is also responsible for maintaining the bridge for the next 27 years as it collects those payments, so it still has lots of work to do.

Local media and members of the public have expressed concern about the bulge at the western end of the bridge. It was put in to allow sailboats with large masts to pass unimpeded from one side of the bridge to the other (the old bridge had a lift-span that would back up traffic while boats passed underneath). But the grade of the bulge's slopes have some people worrying about ice and snow in the winter causing accidents, despite assurances from both the company and the government.

And we'll have to wait and see what condition the bridge is in when its ownership transfers back to the government at the end of the contract.

The new bridge comes at a critical time in Kelowna's history. Environmental awareness and high gas prices have caused some to question the wisdom of pegging future development to increased flows of cars and trucks.

Long before plans for a replacement bridge were drawn up there was talk of building a second corridor through the central Okanagan, including a second crossing of the lake. Bennett himself mused about the need to identify where the corridor could go before he left office in 1986.

Bugging government about a second crossing has become a favourite hobby of local politicians and business leaders. Recent interviews of Falcon by Kelowna journalists inevitably included a question along the lines of, "now that this bridge is done, what about a second crossing?"

When Bennett's time to speak came on Sunday, he made sure to use the platform given to him.

"I would say to the premier, it's just about time to look at more roads for this area so we can continue to grow," he said. "And to start working on the next bridge." The remarks drew the biggest applause of the day.

High-rise Kelowna?

On Sunday, both Campbell and Falcon danced around questions from reporters about a second crossing by saying they just wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of opening the new bridge. But in a past interview, Falcon was clear his government has limited interest in another crossing.

"Looking out 10, 20 years, I think the one biggest shift that I think the area should be aware of is we do face some challenges in term of global warming and climate change," he said, adding the province wants to see more of an emphasis in the future on cycling and other transit options.

Falcon also said the Okanagan has to look at how it develops. "We think we need to see a change in the urban form. We need to see more density, we need to see more opportunities for more high-rises because that is much friendlier in terms of environmental and greenhouse gas output," he said. "And it makes it easier to service from a transit point of view. That I think is something that is going to be a pretty significant shift as we go forward." The shift towards taller buildings has already started. Kelowna has traditionally avoided allowing high rises but city council is on the verge of voting on a controversial redevelopment proposal which would see 30-story high-rises go up downtown by the lake. That's more than twice the maximum height contemplated in the city's downtown plan but appears to have the support of enough councillors to get the green light. Critics worry about "Vancouverization."

In her speech during the ceremonies, Kelowna Mayor Sharon Shepherd noted that when the first bridge opened in 1958, gas cost 5 cents a litre but on this day it was going for $1.36.

Second crossing, second thoughts

Shepherd has long advocated for a second crossing. She even lobbied for it to be built before the old bridge was replaced. But recently she has started to have second thoughts.

"We really do have to think differently," she said in an interview at the top of the new bridge, where she and other politicians were handing out commemorative coins to the throngs who took the opportunity to walk on the bridge deck before it opened to cars.

"Building more roads is not necessarily an answer. We are improving our infrastructure for buses and we have to get people out of their cars and so you know what, that means changing our communities," said Shepherd.

The city is about to embark on a public consultation process as it revises its official community plan and comes up with a vision of what Kelowna should look like in 2030.

"I think that we've all thought that we have to keep planning for roads and all of this," commented the mayor. "So when you sit here and think what will 20 years be like, it may not be having more roads here where people are going to be in their automobiles."

It's just hard to imagine what that Kelowna would look like.

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