Following up on last month’s post on declining traffic volumes in Northwest cities, there’s this new news on the Golden Ears Bridge outside Vancouver, BC:
[O]fficials are trying to lure drivers to the Golden Ears Bridge between Maple Ridge and Langley with reduced tolls on off-peak hours.
Tolls will be slashed by 30 per cent at night and on weekends and holidays during a six week trial run beginning April 15th…The Golden Ears Bridge has seen far less traffic than forecast since it was opened last year.
What’s remarkable here is that revenues from the bridge were already falling short of expectations, with a cumulative shortfall of $63.8 million since 2009. Maybe the drop in toll rates will boost traffic enough to raise revenue overall. Or maybe this is just one more sign that traffic forecasters have been overestimating the pent-up demand for car trips in our part of the world.
Golden Ears Bridge image courtesy of Flickr user caseyyee, distributed under a Creative Commons license.
