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Bored tunnel could mean huge time and cost savings

Editor: On Feb. 6 I attended the George Massey Crossing open house at the Coast Tsawwassen Inn.

Editor:

On Feb. 6 I attended the George Massey Crossing open house at the Coast Tsawwassen Inn. I have also read through the George Massey Crossing Independent Technical Report (submitted to the Ministry of Transportation & Infrastructure) a number of times.

The report shows evaluations and costs for all of the considered options except the tunnel bore option. Westmar Advisors (authors of the report) engaged BGC Engineering in the supplemental Tunnel Expert Panel Report. Their report noted the bored tunnel has the “least” environmental impact of all of the options and suggested that a technical feasibility study of the tunnel boring machine option would be valuable findings to properly determine whether this would be a viable option.

Compared to the immersed tube tunnel option chosen by a task force of Metro Vancouver mayors (highest negative environmental impact and most expensive at $4.3 billion), the bored tunnel option should be properly considered and evaluated by international experts.

Regarding cost of a bored tunnel, I look to the Chunnel project connecting England to France (50 kilometres long) which bored three tubes in 36 months. Theoretically, if a tunnel boring machine was applied to the George Massey Crossing and spanned four kilometres (Steveston Highway overpass to the Highway 17A overpass) simple arithmetic indicates a three- to six-month bore time, resulting in huge time and labour savings.

Is the immersed tunnel option just a stall tactic by the task force? An environmental assessment is estimated to take three years. Really? I suggest an environmental assessment for trenching deep into the Fraser River bed will take more than a few of years. I believe stakeholders may even reject the immersed tunnel option after all is said and done. Even the bridge looks like a better option, environmentally and cost wise.

Feedback to the George Massey Crossing project is being accepted by the provincial government at masseytunnel.ca until Feb. 26.

Bill Jones