TransLink directors vote 8-4 in favour after raucous debate
William Boei
Sun
CREDIT: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun After Pitt Meadows Mayor Don McLean (left) called some of the directors unethical, an irritated Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell (right) got hot under the collar.
TransLink gave final approval Wednesday to the controversial Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line, which is slated to begin construction next year and planned for completion by late 2009 in time for the 2010 Olympic Games.
After twice rejecting the $1.72-billion project and conditionally approving it in a third vote, TransLink directors gave it a final “yes” by an 8-4 margin.
“I think we’ve done the right thing,” Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell said after a raucous debate that saw some TransLink directors calling others unethical and Campbell apparently getting furiously angry with his Pitt Meadows counterpart, Don MacLean.
“I think that 100 years from now this will be seen as visionary,” Mayor Campbell said.
In Victoria, Premier Gordon Campbell predicted RAV will make Vancouver a more livable city in the future.
“It’s going to take 10 lanes of traffic out of the commute,” the premier said. “It’s going to take hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants out of the airshed. It’s going to move people faster around the region.”
However, some directors and transit lobbyists feared the RAV line will drain money from the bus fleet and other transportation priorities.
“I’ve been trying to kill this blood-sucking vampire for some time, unsuccessfully,” Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said, conceding that his long battle against the project was finally lost.
The RAV line will run from Vancouver‘s Waterfront Station under the downtown, False Creek and Cambie Street as far south as 63rd Avenue, where it will emerge to run on an elevated concrete guideway similar to SkyTrain’s. It will cross a new bridge over the Fraser River and split into two branches at Bridgeport, one to Richmond Centre and the other to the airport.
It will be built and operated by a consortium headed by
Montreal-based engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin.
Construction is expected to begin late next year and take five years, for a completion date in late 2009 — in time for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. SNC-Lavalin will then operate the line for 25 years.
TransLink will collect the fares and give the operator annual performance payments.
The $1.72-billion budget is to be covered by $450 million from the federal government; $300 million each from TransLink and the airport authority; $300 million originally promised by the provincial government plus $63 million added by Victoria this week; $206 million from SNC-Lavalin, and $101 million in additional revenue TransLink says it can drum up from the line’s operations.
The fate of the project has hung in the balance since last spring, putting immense pressure on TransLink directors.
North Vancouver City Mayor Barbara Sharp, who cast one of two swing votes that finally guaranteed the project, said she found a threatening note on her car after one contentious board meeting this summer.
Sharp said she knows who left the note, but has decided to take no action.
The vote was closer than it sounds. If the swing votes — cast by Sharp and Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie — had gone the other way, the vote would have been lost on a 6-6 tie and the RAV line would have been condemned to death for a third and final time.
Premier Campbell said taxpayers will not be asked to contribute anything more to the project.
“That’s it, kaputski, done,” he said. “That’s one of the great advantages of this deal. Any overruns are going to be picked up by the private sector.”
But Corrigan and other opponents emphasized that TransLink will bear the cost of any ridership shortfalls on the new line and argued that its projected daily ridership of 100,000 people is unrealistic. About 40,000 people a day now commute by bus through the Cambie corridor.
“You and your children and your children’s children will be paying for this project for decades,” Corrigan told about 150 people who showed up at the Croatian Cultural Centre in East Vancouver to witness the final RAV debate.
Even without additional costs, the RAV line and other regional transportation projects are expected to add about $59 to the average homeowner’s property taxes, increasing the transit levy to about $145 per household. The RAV portion totals about $15 per year.
Corrigan predicted a tax revolt when those bills arrive in mailboxes, and said seniors on fixed incomes may be forced to sell their homes.
MacLean, who also opposed the RAV line, said its cost will prevent other transit projects from being built.
“If you’re from the North Shore, if you’re from Richmond, if you’re from Langley and think that it’s going to be your turn shortly, it isn’t going to happen,” he said. “This is sucking every bit of money out of the system.”
MacLean attacked directors who had previously called for a $1.35-billion cap on public money sunk into the RAV line, but then supported it even though the cap was exceeded.
He said those directors “should be held to account” and went on to note “there is a shortage of ethical politicians.”
Campbell blew up, his face red with anger. “I refuse to be referred to as unethical by the mayor of Pitt Meadows,” he said.
MacLean said he was talking about “politicians all over this country” who make spending decisions.
He apologized to any TransLink directors who were offended. Campbell said later he had talked to MacLean and the two had settled their differences.
“He’s a good guy and I like him,” the Vancouver mayor said.
Sharp and Louie, who both opposed the project earlier, said they had actually saved the RAV line by pushing through a motion forcing it to come back to TransLink for one more vote if it exceeded the $1.35-billion public spending cap.
They said they intended to give the board one more chance to pare the budget and come up with more revenue, and that’s what happened.
“I didn’t want to see a huge cost increase and lose control [of] the final decision,” Sharp said. “That motion is the only reason we’re even here today.”
Louie said the RAV line will be good for 100 years of service and will become a valuable revenue source for other transit projects once the 25-year operating contract with SNC-Lavalin expires.
“This is an opportunity we should not let slide away,” he said.
Also voting for the RAV line was Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, who had threatened to oppose it when the winning bid included an elevated guideway through Richmond instead of the at-grade light-rail system Richmond preferred.
Brodie kept one more option open when the TransLink board agreed to let Richmond study whether the line could run along Minoru Boulevard instead of the planned route of No. 3 Road.
TransLink chairman and Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt also voted for the RAV line, as did Langley City Mayor Marlene Grinnell.
New Westminster Mayor Wayne Wright voted against, saying, “I can’t support it. It’s overpriced.”
Vancouver Coun. David Cadman, also opposed, said there was too much secrecy in the procurement process because of the public-private partnership approach. He blamed the province.
“The provincial government has an interest in one thing and one thing only — a line to Richmond, and it must be a public-private partnership or there will be no money from the provincial government and no [provincial] assistance getting money from the federal government,” Cadman said.
Directors were not allowed to tell the public how much expense TransLink will shoulder to move existing trolley wires and add new ones along the Cambie corridor because of confidentiality, he said. Nor could they disclose how much the design and construction of new bus loops will cost.
As part of the budget-paring, TransLink also agreed to pay for the project’s operating insurance, and Cadman said that was “like insuring your neighbour’s car. We’re insuring something that we have no control over.”
Earlier, the TransLink board heard from about 30 members of the public, many of them members of lobby groups. They opposed the RAV line by a margin of about 10 to one.
One of them, Chris Spannos, told the board SNC-Lavalin is part of another consortium that manufactures ammunition for U.S. forces in Iraq. He wanted TransLink to tell SNC-Lavalin it should withdraw from that project or be disqualified from bidding on the RAV line.
Two Vancouver councillors, Anne Roberts and Fred Bass, also appeared before the board to oppose the RAV line, again highlighting a deep split in Vancouver‘s ruling Coalition of Progressive Electors.
“No matter how you slice and dice these figures, this project is over budget,” Roberts said.
“It’s not affordable, it never has been, and it doesn’t make sense.”
She said it will take money away from the bus system that is the backbone of Greater Vancouver’s transportation system.
So did Bass, who predicted the bus system will be weakened so much that many commuters will go back to driving to work.
