Priority
Transportation
Every other issue in this riding runs through this one. Housing, healthcare, the tourism economy, emergency response, whether a Squamish business can get stock and whether a Whistler shift worker can get to work: all of it depends on a single highway with no redundancy.
- served by essentially one north-south route
- 11,709 km²served by essentially one north-south routeSource: BC Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Report (2023)
A single point of failure
When Highway 99 closes for a collision, a rockfall, a mudslide or a wildfire, communities north of the closure are cut off. Not inconvenienced, cut off. There is no parallel route.
For Lions Bay, the highway runs through the middle of town. For everyone else, it is the supply chain, the ambulance route and the commute at once.
We plan for this corridor as though it were a scenic drive. It is critical infrastructure, and it should be funded, maintained and made resilient like critical infrastructure.
The transit gap at Horseshoe Bay
Regional transit effectively stops at the TransLink boundary. North of it, service is thinner, less frequent and poorly integrated, which means a large commuting population has no realistic alternative to driving.
A reliable, frequent corridor bus service is not a luxury item. It is a housing policy, a cost-of-living policy, an emissions policy and a highway-capacity policy in one, and it is cheaper than any of the alternatives.
What I would push for
A published, funded resilience plan for Highway 99: closure frequency, response times, and the specific investments that would reduce both.
Integrated, frequent corridor transit that actually connects Pemberton, Whistler, Squamish, Lions Bay and West Vancouver to each other and to Metro Vancouver, with fare and schedule integration across the TransLink boundary.
Serious evaluation of long-term corridor alternatives, including rail, assessed honestly rather than used as a talking point.