Stop The Kettle Island Bridge

King Edward is the best option…not

When it comes to making any decision, one of the options always available is to ‘do nothing’. Based on the criteria and the logic that the consultants have used to select the best alternative, we thought it would be interesting to see how the current King Edward crossing would stack up in the rankings relative to the other alternatives.

At stopthebridge.org, we don’t have an army of engineers and consultants who we can ask to spend the next ten months compiling data and quantifying utility factors for this option. So I’m afraid that we’ll have to keep our analysis fairly basic.

With this in mind, we’ve made some basic assumptions about how the King Edward option would be assessed. Here are some of the highlights:

• King Edward ranks #1 by a landslide when it comes to attracting cars and trucks to the corridor;
• The King Edward crossing uses existing roadways with good connections to the provincial highway systems;
• You may be concerned about gridlock, but because there are no factors that consider gridlock or the negative impact associated traffic increases in and around the selected corridor, it is not important;
• King Edward would score very high in the Economic Development category, which measures the potential for commercial and industrial development in the area based on the number of cars and trucks drawn to the area;
• Costs are very low, since there is already a bridge there;
• There would be no incremental impact on fish habitat, waterfowl, or wildlife;
• There would be continued negative impacts on the people living downtown, their communities, and their quality of life. But as we have learned from the consultants, these impacts are unimportant and warrant very little weighting in the final score (see note below);
• Residential property values in the area would continue to be suppressed, but there is no factor that considers these impacts;
• The King Edward route accommodates transportation of hazardous materials;
• There would be no impact on archaeological sites.

So, taking these factors into consideration, King Edward is clearly the best choice. But, if another option is absolutely required, then it is important to select the option that would most closely replicate the near-ideal conditions on King Edward today.

As ridiculous as this conclusion sounds, it does sadly reflect the decision-making criteria and logic that has been employed to select Kettle Island as the best choice.

If you have an issue with this:

• Formally submit your comments to the consultants
• Contact your elected representatives and the decision-makers in this project to tell them how you feel about this issue
• Raise as much awareness any way that you can (elevator pitches, talking to your neighbours, community rallies, letters to the editor, blog participation, etc.)
• Convince everyone you can to do the same

Note: Based on the final weightings published by the consultants, the aggregate weighting assigned to all factors relating to negative impacts on Community is 4.4% of the total score for each alternative. One of the most significant of these in my opinion, called Community Cohesion, is calculated by the total length of corridor passing through established residential areas. Community Cohesion accounts for a mere 0.8% of the total score. Traffic and cost factors combined account for 55%.

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