IT WILL open 12 days behind schedule and with a price tag $30 million higher than originally estimated. By Surj Rattan News Reporter But for North Shore residents, who for years have lived with the rush-hour nightmare of. travelling to and from their jobs via Cassiar Street in Vancouver and the Se- cond Narrows Bridge, the new $125-million Cassiar Connector will be more than worth the wait and the cost. : The connector is scheduled to open Saturday to the public for a 10:39 a.m. walking tour; on Sun- day night it will be officially opened to traffic. The connector project, which was started in 1950, will eliminate the most congested Canadian traf- fic intersection west of Toronto: Cassiar and Hastings. Its maia feature is a 724 metre-long (2,375 feet), twin-box tunnel that will run underneath Cassiar Street between Triumph and Adanac streets. The connector will also have: @ Two lanes in each direction with paved shoulders for handling stalled vehicles and emergency ac- cess. The paved shoulders will be wide enough to allow future con- version of the tunnel into a six- lane expressway. @ A short two-lane tunnel con- structed underneath Hastings Street immediately west of the main tunnel that will allow transit buses to cross under Hastings Street; a future transit exchange is being considered for the area. The tunnel will be manned from a control room 24 hours a day by employees of North Vancouver- based Capilano Highway Services Co. It will handle an estimated * 100,000 vehicles a day, - with 90,000 of those vehicles being fed into the connector system from the Second Narrows Bridge. Dale Cripps, division director of SNC-Fenco, the project manager for the Cassiar Connector project, said the control tower will include: @ emergency generators; - @ a bank of television monitors that will monitor vehicle move- ment in the tunnel! via 26 different cameras; . @ and devices to monitor carbon monoxide emissions. The tunnel will with: @a_ ceiling-mounted jet fan system, which is being used for the first time in North America; @ emergency escape doors every . 45 metres along the tunnel; be outfitted y: @ “SOS” boxes. with telephones ; and fire extinguishers. “We'll be able to take 3,000 vehicles per hour in the tunnel and the tunnel would cut about 10 minutes going from the Second Narrows Bridge to the freeway,”’ said Cripps. “The Vancouver-to-Burnaby commuter will get some benefit from the tunnel, but the Trans- Canada Highway commuter will be the big beneficiary.”’ Cripps said the tunnel is design- ed for speeds of up to 80 km/h. But because the speed limits on the Second Narrows Bridge and at the bridge’s south end are 60 km/h and 70 km/h, respectiveiy, Cripps said the speed limit in the tunnel will also likely be 70 km/h. Motorists travelling through the tunnel will still be able to use their cellular telephones, something that is not possible while travelling through the George Massey tun- nel. Jim Davidson, spokesman for the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, which is funding the project along with Vancouver City, said widening the Second Narrows Bridge and part of the Upper Levels Highway is also be- ing considered. “The District and City of North Vancouver will play a major role when, and if, the Second Narrows Bridge is expanded to eight lanes and the six-laning of the cut on the Uprer Levels Highway,”’ said Davidson. ‘‘We will work closely with their engineering depart- ments.”” Cripps said lengthy negotiations between the province and Van- couver City delayed the connector project. “This is a project that has been on ‘the books since the early 1960s,’ said Cripps. ‘‘The City of Vancouver has its own charter and controls its own street system. At the time the freeway was built the city said it did not want a freeway through its borders. “The city saic it would go for the shorter tunnel, but that the highways ministry had to get rid of the Rupert Street diversion.”’ It took until November 1988 for all of the financial! commitments to be approved for the connector project. Vancouver contributed to the project by giving up the tight-of-way through city-owned land along the east side of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds, But as the project grew over.the years, so did its price tag. When the project was first an- nounced in November 1988, it was estimated that the connector would cost $85 million in 1988 dollars. That. figure rose to ~ $110,700,000 in 1989 dollars and increased again to its current $115-million cost. Es SO ETE | COALS RE EE ES Index B® Automotives @ Classified Ads M@ Editorial Page .... Home & Garden WA Trevor Lautens WB Mailbox Weather Saturday & Sunday mostly cloudy with chance of showers. Highs 6°C, lows 0°C. Second Class Registration Number 3885 Friday, January 10, 1992 — North Shore News - 3 Cassiar Connector set to open $115M project to ease | N. Shore commuter flow j» NEWS photo Mike Wakefield MEMBERS OF the media were given a walking tour of the Cassiar Connector this week. The project includes a 724 metre-iong, four-lane tunnel. Forum tackles issue of violence against women WV meeting at St. David’s United Church “VIOLENCE AGAINST women is unacceptable.”’ By A.P. McCredie Contributing Writer That was the message pres- ented Tuesday evening at West Vancouver’s St. David’s United Church as federal and provin- cial politicians, along with local community services repre- sentatives, discussed current and future initiatives concern- ing the safety of women in society. Addressing a group of ap- proximately 130 citizens, many directly involved in social ser- vice agencies, Capilano-Howe Sound MP Mary Collins said, “The absence of violence, and the absence of the fear of vio- lence, are essential to human progress.”’ According to Collins, who is the federal Minister Responsi- ble for the Status of Women: @ one in 10 women is battered or beaten by her spouse or male partner; @ more than half the women in Canada feel afraid to walk alone in their neighborhoods; @ and over 27,000 cases of sexual assault were reported to Canadian police in 1990. “From a_ federal perspec- tive,’ Collins said, ‘“‘we have accepted this issue as a national problem and a nationai priori- ty, and we have accepted the responsibility to work with others — with others because no one level of government or single organization can ac- complish this end in itself — to spread the message that vio- lence against women is a denial of rights."" The importance of coor- dinated initiatives within the 64 We have accepted this issue as a national problem and a national priority. #9 community was also seen as key by both the provincial rep- resentative, Van- couver-Hastings MLA Joy MacPhail, and North Shore Community Services executive director Pearl McKenzie. Reminding the audience that the current provincial govern- ment has seven women in its cabinet, MacPhail pledged that solutions to the violence aimed at women is a major priority of MP MARY COLLINS the Harcourt government. But MacPhail said that one of the major problems on the provincial government level was that 11 different ministries were responsible for allocating money to deal with violence against women, The stand-alone Ministry of - Women’s Equality, a first for —Mary Collins B.C., was created in an at- tempt to bypass that bureau- cratic logjam. With the new ministry, MacPhail said: the government hopes ‘“‘we will be able to spend much more energy delivering services directly from the _Ministry of Women’s Equality into the tommunity and the people that need the services.”” Looking to -new initiatives that her government should consider, MacPhail briefly touched upon several areas that she feit could aid the cause: @ public transit; @ employer education; © the education system; @ the legal system; @ financial support to victims of violence. : : McKenzie, the forum’s third and final speaker, continued on the. path of the two previous speakers by stating, ‘‘It is in the community that we have to intervene effectively to protect women and children.”’ Outlining current programs in North Vancouver, such as the Coordinating Committee on Wife-Assault, programs for the elderly and the disabled, and the Guardianship Commit- tee, McKenzie said much good work had been done, but more community initiatives need to be implemented. The forum findings will be available after Jan. 20 from North Shore Community Ser- vices, 1060 Roosevelt Cres., North Vancouver, B.C. V7P 1M3.