Port Mann Bridge

Checking in with BC's NDP leader Adrian Dix

Earlier this week, BC NDP leader Adrian Dix spent a couple of days in the Kootenays. On his agenda was a tour of the Waneta expansion project, a nomination meeting to confirm our MLA, Katrine Conroy, as our NDP nominee for a possible upcoming election, and visiting small businesses in the area as part of his ongoing anti-HST campaign. His visit comes in the midst of our current HST referendum, which ends August 5 (the date was extended due to the labour disruption at Canada Post).

Apparently our riding is the hotbed of anti-HST sentiment, and according to Dix, we had the highest level of signatures on the initiative petition in the province when it started going around last year.

“The HST has really hurt working people and small business,” Dix told me in a phone interview. “It hurts small businesses because there’s less money in the pockets of working families. It’s a major tax shift. And of course the government has consistently misled people and is still misleading people about the nature of the tax.They spend millions of taxpayer dollars to advertise the position of the Liberal party, and I think that bothers a little too. "

A major problem arising from the HST, Dix said, is trust. "The government ... promised they would not put it in the HST - they promised in writing - and then they did. Then they promised that it would be fiscally neutral, and it was not. They promised all the money would go to health care - they even passed a law to make it happen - now it is not. They promised it would create 100,000 jobs, and now it will not. And they promised it would lower prices and now it does not. And the premier promised she’d run the referendum on the rules of a provincial election--she promised that in writing as well--[but] she broke her word on that so that they could spend millions of dollars in public money on Liberal TV ads. It raises issues about any commitment this premier or the Liberal party makes on the HST.”

Dix is in favour of reinstating the old PST system, which he said would not be difficult to revert back to. As for the $1 billion bonus the federal government gave BC for signing up for the HST, Dix said that the potential repayment (something that would have to be negotiated with the federal government) of that money isn’t reason enough to keep the tax.

The carbon tax was in the news a couple of years ago when it was instituted. Dix has stated he would see revenues from that tax used for initiatives that would reduce BC’s carbon footprint, and he would rescind the exemptions big businesses currently get.

July 13: Port Mann is slow - Dashboard

Update 9:40 a.m.: Highway 7 has now been opened to single-lane alternating traffic approximately six kilometres west of Agassiz. The highway was temporarily closed after a collision involving an RCMP vehicle late Tuesday.

Update 8:30 a.m.: Highway 7 is closed in both directions 6 km west of Agassiz due to a collision. You have to detour eastbound to Highway 11 and Highway1; detour westbound on Highway 9 and Highway 1. In Delta, there's an accident southbound on Highway 99 at Highway 10 (Ladner Trunk Road). Elsewhere, the highway is closed between Anahim Lake and Bella Coola due to a rock slide. No detour available, and there's no estimated time of opening.

6:40 a.m.: At the Port Mann Bridge, westbound Highway 1 is slow from the scales, and at the Alex Fraser Bridge, traffic is backed up almost to 64th Avenue.In Richmond, a semi westbound on Westminster east of Graybar has lost a wheel.

Port Mann bridge, professional engineer's site visit, February 25, 1961

Highway research record

Structural Health Monitoring, Current Status and Perspectives

Orthotropic bridges theory and design

The manual of bridge engineering