Some responses to “Battle of the bridge” article

Today’s Times-Colonist featured an article by Bill Cleverley, Battle of the bridge: Pro-cash borrowing city vs. cautious citizens – click through to read Cleverley’s piece. The paper had enabled comments on the article, and I posted the following:

I learned something new from Bill Cleverley’s article today, namely that the so-called AAP was changed in 2004 from needing a 5% threshold to needing 10% of elector signatures. I didn’t know about this change, nor that it happened so recently (2004), nor that it was a change desired by the Province, nor that it was obviously designed to make AAPs more likely to fail (by raising the threshold), nor that the Province wanted AAPs to fail because they didn’t want P3s stopped by elector responses.

Ironically, I’m not opposed to P3s at all – but, boy, do I ever think that designing roadblocks into electorate participation is a BAD idea! And to think that this city council – elected on social issues – is using such a process to thwart elector response to the biggest borrowing project in the city’s history! The word “shame” doesn’t begin to describe what’s going on here…

I’d like to comment on the local labor issue: you’ll employ more local people (and typically on a more permanent footing) if you refurbish the existing bridge and then also instate a regular maintenance program. Building a brand new bridge simply gives far-away specialists a job – think BC Ferries built in Germany. Is this what we want for municipal infrastructure?

Further, the article states that electors can send their completed forms to the city, but I would ask ANYONE who completes a form to send it to us, at JonsonStreetBridge.ORG (full disclosure: I’m a founder / director at same):
JohnsonStreetBridge.ORG
PO Box 5324, 1625 Fort Street (Station B)
Victoria, BC Canada V8R 6S4
We will pick up your completed forms upon request: Phone 250 704 9120 or email petition@johnsonstreetbridge.org
You can also drop by our volunteer / campaign office, Unit A 777 Blanshard St. (corner of Fairfield and Blanshard).

Why are we asking people to send their forms to us? Because the city will try to disqualify as many as possible, and we want to help ensure that those voters whose intent is to support the call for a referendum are heard. To that end, we’ll check forms carefully, and if we note errors or omissions (which the city would use to trash your vote), we’ll get in touch with you for a correction. We will be keeping a tally, too. The city won’t count forms until after January 4, and if they throw out forms because of errors, it will be too late for those electors to hand in a corrected form. So, protect yourself and your vote: get in touch with us and send your forms directly to us. We will make sure your voice is heard.

Subsequently, a reader named mike(kelowna) posted a comment back at me, to say that the BC Ferries could have been built in BC; that the bridge is past “refurbishment”; and that local builders would benefit from new bridge construction.

Since mike(kelowna) seemed unaware that we (at JohnsonStreetBridge.ORG) have been talking to bridge experts (some of whom pointed out that new bridge construction does not bring an abundance of local jobs because the high-level manufacturing is done elsewhere), I posted a second comment:

Thanks for your question, mike(kelowna). Of course I never meant to imply that BC shipbuilders *can’t* build ferries. It’s just that they weren’t asked to – the German shipbuilders were. And by the same token, it won’t be BC engineers or steelworkers who’ll build a new Johnson Street Bridge. It will be contractors from out-of-province (possibly Canadian, …or possibly *not*), and in any case not *local* workers (that is, they won’t be from this municipality, Victoria – yet the JSB is a piece of city-owned infrastructure that City of Victoria taxpayers are responsible for).

As for your remarks about the state of the present Johnson Street Bridge: rest assured that we at JohnsonStreetBridge.ORG have explored plenty of information sources, including (of course) a close reading of the Delcan Condition Assessment Report commissioned by the City of Victoria, and most especially including direct discussions with a number of extremely experienced bridge engineers. We’re in touch with folks in Seattle and Portland, as well as Vancouver, not to mention engineers in Victoria who come to our meetings to lend passive (and sometimes vocal) support. Each engineer we’ve talked to has had an opportunity to review the Delcan Report (commissioned by the City of Victoria, and available for your review online – see CoV website), and has inspected the bridge in person. We’re in touch with folks in the umbrella organization of BC engineers (Structural Engineering Association of BC ), and there’s an article recommending the JSB for bridge heritage status in that organization’s most recent newsletter (see p.11-13 of the November 2009 Structural Engineers Association British Columbia newsletter, Issue no.008, download via this link). The author (Michael Roberts, P.Eng.) notes that the bridge needs to be replaced or *rehabilitated*, but asks this additional question:
QUOTE:
“Should the fate or future of public domain structures like bridges or dams, that primarily fall into the civil engineer’s realm, be determined based solely on an engineering assessment, or should there be triggers in place similar to the City of Vancouver’s Heritage Register that require an evaluation process for retaining the historic elements of structures?
(…)
“When our clients make decisions primarily based upon cost comparisons, should we as engineers not have a tool by which we assess value beyond structural assessment?
“The absence of such a tool may leave decisions open to political and agenda-based biases.”
UNQUOTE
Nowhere in Mr. Roberts’s article or in the conversations we’ve had with other bridge engineers *nor ANYWHERE in the City’s own commissioned report (the Delcan Report)* has there been *any* indication that these experts believe the bridge to be “beyond” repair. In fact, many of the experts point out that repair is always cheaper than replacement. It’s not cheap – but it is cheaper. And as Mr. Roberts asks, shouldn’t there in any case be other “triggers” at work when it comes to structures of overarching significance such as this one? Like their heritage value, for instance?

This bridge is repairable. We’re in the first generation of steel structures: as long as they are coated and maintained properly, there is no reason to put a “best by” date on steel structures.

Furthermore, the first question any engineer asks is, “what capacity was this structure built for?” If it was built for light capacity, but now needs to handle high/ heavy capacity, then maybe it can’t be saved/ retrofitted. But guess what? The Johnson Street Bridge was engineered to handle *street cars* (that is: very heavy loads), so it can easily handle current vehicular loads.

But wait: not only was it engineered to handle street cars! No, it was *also* engineered to handle TRAINS, meaning it is eminently capable of bearing whatever loads we throw at it (maybe short of Panzers rolling across in formation, although it might even be able to accommodate that…).

So please, let’s stop with the idea that the bridge is about to fall down. In fact, should we have a big earthquake any time soon, I hope I’m on the JSB and not down at City Hall or in any building in our venerated Old Town. That’s where all hell is going to break loose (literally), because those structures have NOT been seismically upgraded and are sure to collapse. The City of Victoria might ask itself whether it isn’t better to put money into upgrading buildings than to have a super-duper seismically safe JSB (whether new or rehabbed). The community needs to have that conversation, too.

But so far, we haven’t been asked. We’re just being told.

Some democracy this is.

At present (11:30pm, 11/29) the second comment isn’t yet up on the Times-Colonist site, but I expect it will be soon. Click through to read all 30-plus comments so far, many of which are very interesting.

Normally I wouldn’t cross-post comments from other sites, but in this instance I posted my remarks to my Facebook profile and am now adding them here.

Why? Anything to counteract the outrageous notion that this bridge is past its shelf-life. I talked with a neighbor the other day who insisted that any steel structure older than 50 years has to be torn down because it’s no good anymore. He refused to be informed otherwise, claiming that he can see the rust with his own eyes and that therefore the bridge has to go. I was so stunned by his irrational outburst, I forgot to point out that the Golden Gate Bridge, the Lions Gate Bridge, and the Eiffel Tower are still in top form and hardly falling to pieces.

There’s so much hysteria about this bridge that I’m wondering if it’s a case of sublimated gephyrophobia (thanks to Sharon Wood Wortman for familiarizing me with that word during an impromptu Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday). Perhaps more on rampant gephyrophobia in a later post.

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