Lions Gate Bridge opened 80 years ago; business group says third North Shore crossing needed

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – If your travels take you over the Lions Gate Bridge today, take a moment to wish it a happy 80th birthday.

The crossing officially opened to all traffic on Nov. 14, 1938 and a business group on the North Shore is marking the milestone by pushing for another route over Burrard Inlet.

While there are no real plans to build a third crossing at this point, Patrick Stafford-Smith with the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce believes there should be.

“To know the Lions Gate Bridge is that old is certainly a testament to how long people have been travelling back and forth from the North Shore to the rest of Metro Vancouver, but the world has changed a little bit since then,” Stafford-Smith said.

“Now the real challenge is getting people to their jobs on the North Shore. That’s what has created a lot of the traffic problems.”

But he says the business community in North Vancouver is in favour of a transit-only bridge to supplement the Lions Gate and the Iron Workers Memorial crossings.

“Not another road bridge. I know people in cars feel the frustration and they’d love to see more lanes, but it has been proven over and over again that when you build new lanes, they fill up,” he told NEWS 1130.

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“Now we need options where people can get out of their cars and maybe that will free up the road for the people who have no choice. We’d be really keen to see some transit infrastructure and a fixed link — not road, but public transit.”

Stafford-Smith says the Chamber of Commerce does not favour any particular route over another, but he points out there are a lot of workers who commute to the North Shore from places like Burnaby, Port Moody, Surrey, and Langley.

“It’s really key that we do an analysis and build what makes sense and we are able to get people in the rest of Metro Vancouver here to work.”

While the Chamber of Commerce isn’t alone in its desire to see a third crossing over the inlet, the idea of a new bridge was rejected in a plan put out in September by the Integrated North Shore Transportation Planning Project, a group of local municipal and provincial politicians looking at solutions to the North Shores traffic woes.