Mike DeWolfe : The Daily Edition

I am biased in favour of Voting "No" for the bridge project loan. Here's what the Yes and No vote says to me about the decisions being made when you go to the polling booth: Vote No Maybe you just want to see the bridge repaired. It's not that you want to keep the old bridge, you just don't want to green light a $50 million loan because of its implications. The replacement isn't costing $50-million. That's just the loan amount. It's budgeted at $77-million. Budget overruns are a given. This bridge could be $90-million or more. If you let them take out the loan, the City Council will take the in-for-a-penny approach. The extra millions will come from your pockets. This is your money and the City's decisions. Remember when they urged people to vote on the bridge design? Three viable candidate designs were foisted on us-- they purposefully omitted the repair option. The people spoke: they selected an option. Council took the second most popular option...

Victoria is bridge happy. In its 150 years (since the Fort Victoria days), we've gone through 4 downtown bridges. Two (Johnson St. and Point Ellice) are still standing. One bridge is critical for our infrastructure (the Point Ellice Bridge aka Bay Street Bridge) and we're not talking about it. The Bay St. Bridge funnels natural gas, electrical, communications and industrial traffic. Johnson Street Bridge is the kitschy bridge that can rise or lower. It funnels traffic between the low-rent part of town and the downtown core. With one bridge key to the functionality of our city and one that's visible when you're a tourist-- we're zeroing in on the Blue Bridge. For a long time I have involuntarily been helping the "Yes" campaign. All of the those bus shelter ads; and flyers and media blitzes-- I paid for those. As a taxpayer, I have been obliged to pay for the tens of thousands of dollars wasted on making the "Yes" side prominent and the defacto cho...

With all of this hooplah over the Blue Bridge at the foot of Johnson Street, I have to ask why? As in "Why are we not decommissioning the Johnson St. Bridge?" For a long time, Greater Victoria has been on a vendetta against the car. Esquimalt Road lost lanes. Bay Street lost lanes. UVic has been slowly turning parking lots into buildings. Our city needs to go Green and get rid of the Blue Bridge. The Johnson Street Bridge facilitates a tremendous amount of automobile use. Repairing it will cost a lot of money. Replacing it will use up a huge amount of steel, concrete and it amounts to massive exercise in carbon escape. The City of Victoria turned from its pattern of maintenance expenditures in 2007 to spend just a fraction on the bridge as it aged. The City has the right idea: let it rot. Make a reasoned guess as to the remainder of its lifespan. Then start doling money on the bridge that is key for infrastructure and transport: the Bay St. Bridge. If you think the idea of de...