When the Trans Canada Highway was built in the 1960's, the city of Vancouver would not allow a freeway to be built within its city limits. A decade later the Provincial government and the City of Vancouver started working together to find an effective solution that would connect the Trans Canada Highway from William Street to the Second Narrows Bridge. The main problem was to resolve the tremendous traffic congestion at the Cassiar and Hastings intersection. Three alternative solutions were proposed. An agreement was reached in 1988 and finally in March 1990 the construction of a tunnel between Adanac and Triumph Streets began. The tunnel was opened to traffic on January 12, 1992. Today most of the Cassiar Connector Project is complete. In this social impact analysis of the affected neighbours, the authors did a comparison of the social situation before and after the construction of the Project. They conducted a survey using an attitude questionnaire. Their goal was to discover whether the displaced and relocated residents suffered more socially than materially. The results indicate that over all the respondents are more satisfied with their current situation and they effectively suffered more socially than materially from the expropriation process. (A)
Abstract