Really? Is this the best we can expect from TransLink, deception?
Two quotes from TransLink CEO, Kevin Desmond, are very disturbing:
Desmond called the Canada Line, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary, a “smart investment”.
“But, he said, he hopes the region has learned that lesson, adding that “help is on its way” for the Canada Line in the form of larger cars being delivered next year which should increase capacity by 25 per cent.”
The Canada Line was one of former premier Campbell’s phony P-3 projects and eagerly applauded by the airport authority.
To curb spiraling costs, the scope of the project was cut back to a badly truncated mini-metro, costing around $2.4 billion (pus an additional $110 million or more operating cost, paid to the SNC Lavalin lead operating consortium annually). The Canada line with 40 metre long station platforms has roughly slightly more than half the capacity of the Expo and Millennium Lines, which station platforms are 80 metres in length.
Also ignored is that the Canadian and American standard for building a subway is a transit route with traffic flows exceeding 15,000 pphpd, yet the maximum capacity that can be achieved is around 9,000 pphpd. The Canada line was more a grift by the BC Liberal Party than a smart investment. The judge presiding over the Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink (failed on appeal) called the Canada line’s bidding process “a charade”.
As built, the Canada line has much less capacity than a modern tram or LRT line costing a fraction to build!
There are no new “larger cars” as quoted by Desmond, rather 3-car trains are said to be operated in the future and they will only be operated if all the station platforms are extended to 50 metres and still, there will be considerable overhang, which will be a safety concern.
This statement also ignores the fact that the maximum capacity of the Canada line is still around 9,000 pphpd and to further increase capacity beyond 9,000 pphpd, over $1.5 billion must be spent rebuilding every station with at least 80 metre long platforms and other necessary updates.
Just this summer, the city of Caen France opened a 16 km tramway costing CAD $373 million! Put another way, one can build 64 km of new tramway, based on the Caen model, compared to a no extension, capacity increase only $1.5 billion rehab!
Smart investment, you must be joking, Mr. Desmond.
As no other city or transit authority has copied building a truncated heavy-rail metro, as a light metro; especially when a further $1.5 billion or more must be spent in the future upgrading the line so capacity can match that of the present Expo and Millennium lines, shows TransLink CEO Chair, Kevin Desmond is completely out of touch with reality.
And please, stop pretending the Canada Line is successful, as the vast majority of its ridership comes from the fact all Richmond, South Delta/Surrey buses, former Cambie St. and “Airporter” bus customers are now forced to transfer onto the Canada Line. The widely distributed U-Pass and the many post secondary institutions serviced by the route, means many customers are using this expensive service on the cheap.
What should embarrass him further is that the Canada line, internationally is considered a “white elephant”.
There is no future money for the Canada Line in sight and with TransLink’s current disastrous planning, with $4.6 billion being spent to extend the Expo and Millennium line a mere 12.8 km, means that there will be no extension of the Canada line until the remaining 25 years of the 35 year concession has ended and only if funding is sourced.
TransLink CEO, Kevin Desmond, is either deluded, or purposely deceiving the taxpayer at the behest of metro mayors and the provincial government.
Canada Line to Richmond ‘underbuilt:’ TransLink CEO
Maria Rantanen / Richmond NewsOctober 25, 2019
Vancouver International Airport CEO, Craig Richmond, challenged TransLink CEO, Kevin Desmond, to think big and build more trains in the region.
Think big, stay connected and work with your partners seemed to be the theme at “Metro Vancouver on the Move,” a panel discussion organized by the Richmond Chamber of Commerce last week, where the two CEOs were joined by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s president and CEO, Robin Silvester.
Richmond pointedly told TransLink’s CEO to “be bold” with their transit expansion, for example, to not just dig the tunnel halfway to UBC.
“Find the money to do this, don’t go small, go big because infrastructure is such an enabler in so many ways,” he said. He added that, looking at the example of the Canada Line, there should be four or five times trains like that in the area.
To highlight the problems that inadequate transit cause for his sector, Richmond recounted that the owner of a YVR restaurant is paying for cabs for his employees to arrive early in the morning and leave late at night because of the lack of transportation options.
The airport is also able to transport crab to Brisbane in its refrigerated cargo planes, but if the crab can’t get to the airport because of congestion, it can’t get to Australia, he said. With the congestion on Russ Baker Way increasing, this could become a greater problem.
Twenty per cent of passengers flying out of YVR come to the airport with the Canada Line, which is low globally but very high by North American standards. But people living farther out who can’t access the Canada Line will get increasingly caught up in congestion to the airport.
“If they can’t get to the airport, we can’t put them on an airplane,” Richmond said.
TransLink’s Desmond agreed the airport, the transit authority and the port are “completely and utterly connected.”
In the past year, Richmond and Delta have seen a nine per cent increase in ridership, but only a four per cent increase in service, Desmond said.
He said lessons have been learned, for example, the Canada Line is an example of infrastructure whose use was under-estimated and under-planned.
Desmond called the Canada Line, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary, a “smart investment,” but he pointed out there was discussion at the time whether it should even be built.
“At the end of the day, we underbuilt it (…) we have to think bigger, we have to think 10, 20, 30, 40 years in advance,” Desmond said.
Those planning new transit often get caught up in their smaller municipalities, asking whether people will want new transit projects, what the local impact will be, but, in the end, the Canada Line is an example of how a project was too small already at opening.
But, he said, he hopes the region has learned that lesson, adding that “help is on its way” for the Canada Line in the form of larger cars being delivered next year which should increase capacity by 25 per cent.
Seattle’s so called light rail system is in reality a light metro system that uses light rail vehicles. Over 90% of the system is grade separated either in subway or on elevated guide-ways.
In the United States, light rail has morphed into light metro and light metro is very expensive when compared to classic light rail.
But our neighbours to the South are finding that light metro is becoming even more expensive and now fiscal constraint is showing its hand.
Seattle’s transit planners, like their brethren to the North love subways and tunneling, but the taxpayer, well that’s another story, as transit planners and their political masters don’t give a damn about the taxpayer.
There is one troubling quote which should give pause to those who support a Broadway subway:
Transit CEO Peter Rogoff is also warning that construction inflation jumped by one-fourth just since 2016, so hard choices lie ahead.
Translation: Cost have increased 25% in just three years!
Troubling indeed, because in Vancouver the 1916 cost estimates fro the Broadway subway have probably jumped by one-fourth as well.
Just a reminder the “light” in Light Rail, means “light” in costs, something that planners in both Vancouver and Seattle have ignored.
Seattle's light-metro uses light rail vehicles, giving it the flexibility to operate on lesser rights-of-ways.
Pricier light-rail tunnels into Ballard and West Seattle fall by the wayside
In a show of urgency and fiscal restraint, Sound Transit board members Thursday abandoned ideas for a $450 million (CAD $ 569.5 million) tunnel into historic central Ballard, a $200 million (CAD $254 million) bored tunnel through West Seattle’s Pigeon Point neighborhood, and a fully elevated trackway in Sodo that would have blocked light-rail travel during construction.
Cheaper options that serve the same number of passengers and will still cost hundreds of millions of dollars will now gain momentum during environmental studies — notably a simpler Ballard tunnel to 15th Avenue Northwest, favored by Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Politicians on the 18-member board have entertained dozens of alignment concepts since 2016, when voters passed the $54 billion (CAD $ 68.4 billion) ST3 tax measure to expand regional rail and bus services. The agency promised West Seattle stations in 2030 and stations from south downtown to Seattle Center and Ballard by 2035.
As the wish list swelled, some scenarios threatened to delay grand openings, add complexity, and boost the $8 billion budget estimate by a $2 billion (2014 dollars) within the 12-mile Seattle corridor. Some of those, including 200-foot-deep train platforms for International District/Chinatown Station for an expanded station and tunnel, or a tunnel from West Seattle Golf Course to Alaska Junction, remain on the study menu. Seattle is likely to seek “third party funding,” yet to be identified, for local upgrades.
Adding pressure, Tim Eyman’s Initiative 976 on the Nov. 5 ballot seeks to slash car-tab taxes to $30 statewide. Even if voters or the courts side with Sound Transit against the Eyman ballot measure, state lawmakers may consider car-tax cuts.
Transit CEO Peter Rogoff is also warning that construction inflation jumped by one-fourth just since 2016, so hard choices lie ahead.
MAGLEV, the great Philosopher’s Stone for transportation, yet in practice, MAGLEV’s are extremely expensive and today, the high speed train is only slightly slower, much cheaper and far more flexible in operation.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Rumour has it that the Conservative Ontario Government wants to make the Ontario Line a MAGLEV.
Politicians love gadgetbahns because they firmly believe it makes the voter feel that they are forward thinking and up to date, untill the bills start coming in.
So Ontario, once again, maybe, is getting into the transportation business and wants something to be built so it can be sold world wide, politely forgetting all the others ones have failed so far.
From Wolfgang (mechanical engineer who consults on transit/rail systems), from Germany.
The Germans spent 20 years developing Mag-Lev but they gave it up when they found there was no way to make it economical.
The whole maglev project (“Transrapid”) over here was based on a false assumption. And when the assumption turned out to be false, it was already to late to stop the project, because it had already been institutionalized.
The assumption was that the wheel-rail system had some kind of techno-economical speed limit at ~250 km/h. This was an idea developed in the 60s. As soon as the issue was actually scientifically investigated with roller rigs (among others, at Muenchen-Freimann) as well as on actual lines (among others, by SNCF), it turned out that the only practical limit is the density of air, resp. the traction power required to overcome aerodynamic drag.
But by that time, interested corporations (Thyssen, Siemens,…) had already founded a dedicated company, together with “public” money. So the “solution” was institutionalized before the problem had been investigated. Once it had turned out that the project was a non-starter from the technical and economical point of view, it took almost 40 years to overcome the “survival instinct” of that purpose-built institution.
In the end it turned out that the electro-magnetic suspension and guidance system had far more technical problems at high speed than the good old wheel-rail system. Essentially because it requires active control due to its inherent instability. And that control gets quite difficult with rising speed and due to aerodynamics (turbulence’s acting on the “cars”).
The Germans were able to sell it to China for their High Speed Rail program so the Chinese built Mag-Lev to the Shanghi Airport.
Just another “Gadgetbahn”. Un-technology that has no valid reason to exist.
It seems the French clearly understand the benefits of light rail, well they should, because they have studied both LRT and light-metro (VAL).
Like Vancouver’s SkyTrain, VAL was made by MATRA, the famous arms manufacturer and in the 1980’s the general political thought was, if no one used VAL for transit, it would reflect badly on MATRA’s arms sales. Thus the French government in a political diktat tried to force French cities to build with VAL, even financing the initial line.
But………..
French civic politicians (unlike BC politicians), are ever mindful of the public purse well understood the huge costs of light metro, especially future expansion and upkeep costs and in the end, only a handful were built, as study after study showed that “Le Tram”, was the the best option for both the customer and the taxpayer.
Today, Siemens owns VAL and is marketed mainly as an airport people mover and only eight such systems have been built.
This month the City of Avignon is opening their new tramway.
The 5.2 km line cost €135 million (CAD $190.75 million) or CAD $36.7 million per km to build. Due to political interference, the line is short, thus per km costs are higher, but when one thinks that TransLink is building a 5.8 km subway under Vancouver for over $3 billion, “Le Tram” certainly seems far better value for money and far better value for the taxpayer and customer.
THE French city of Avignon inaugurated the first phase of its new light rail service on October 19, a 5.2km stretch with 10 stations from Saint Roch in the south of the city centre to Saint Chamand, the location of the mainline station in the southeast.
Journeys between the termini on Line T1 take 15 minutes and are served by 14 three-section LRVs supplied by Alstom. The 24m-long, 2.4m-wide vehicles are a shortened version of the Citadis X05 and use 750V dc traction. They have capacity for up to 140 passengers and have a maximum speed of 70km/h.
Services run at 5-6 minute frequencies between 06.00 and 00.00 and are operated by Orizo, the public transport operator in the greater Avignon area, while Grand Avignon is the line’s owner. Existing bus services have been optimised to coordinate with the new service.
Plans for the project were approved and developed in 2011-13. However, inauguration of the project was in doubt in 2014 when the newly-elected mayor vowed to cancel the scheme. The result was a modification to the plan, scaling back the project from three lines to one and the cost from €330m to €135m, with construction getting underway in October 2016.
Expansion of the network is still planned through the construction of Line T2. Construction is currently scheduled to start in 2021 and conclude in 2023. There are also plans to extend Line T1 to the north while additional sections could be added to the LRVs to meet future demand.
Avignon’s previous tram system was closed in 1932.
With the clear evidence that transportation authorities around the world opting to build with LRT, one must pose, again, the question;
Why does TransLink inflate the cost of light Rail?
The simple answer is, “they don’t want to build with light rail, so they inflate the cost to match that of SkyTrain.
From the Briefing Paper of UK Light Rail Schemes.
Acknowledgements Richard Higgins, Arup Steve Warrener and Daniel Satizabal, Transport for Greater Manchester Roger Harrison, Keolis Rory O’Connor, Rail Procurement Agency, Dublin Alastair Richards, AMRT Consult Limited Mat Taylor and Rachel Timmis, Franklin and Andrews
A clarification: the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), used existing German Stadtbahn cars or light rail vehicles, and was built on existing but abandoned, largely elevated rights-of-ways, in the Docklands area of East London, thus the initial cost is much cheaper, compared to later extensions. The Docklands was going to be a true LRT system, like Vancouver, but then Prime Minister Margret Thatcher wanted a “automatic” (like the French VAL and Canadian ALRT) system strictly for political prestige.
Later extensions were considerably more expensive to build.
As we can see the average cost of light rail schemes was £12.2 or CAD $20.65 million. Yet TransLink’s cost for LRT in Surrey was exceeding $165 million per km.! TransLink’s cost estimate for light rail was eight times more than the average cost of light rail in the UK!
Our friend in Ottawa, Mr. Haveacow is now warning that the old formula at the federal infrastructure bank will give only 33% of the cost in future funding, with the province anteing 33%, leaving the municipal taxpayer left funding the the rest!
Regardless who wins everybody was warned this year the federal infrastructure bank will only give a maximum funding of 33% of the project cost unless, it’s a federal agency project (like VIA Rail) or its a infrastructure project that is so expensive the municipality in question can’t realistically support its 33% portion. Even Toronto will have to pay 20% on the next 2 subway projects (total cost $16.5 Billion), that’s $3.3 Billion for just the residents of the City of Toronto on the combined cost of the next 2 subway lines. For one of the projects, York Region will have to put in $530 Million or 20% as well.
The point is that, Translink is going to have to put in much more than they have been recently. The mayor’s council is going to have to find more for Stage 3 of their 10 year transit plan. The 20% they paid for Stage 2 will grow to a minimum of 33% in stage 3, regardless who wins the federal election. The 40% (Federal), 40% (Provincial) and 20% (TransLink) era for rapid transit capital funding in Vancouver is over. This means overly expensive SkyTrain projects will have to be rethought.
Even American Transportation Engineer, Gerald Fox warned us back in 2008 with his critique of the Evergreen line;
I’ve no desire to get drawn into the Vancouver transit wars, and, anyway, most of the rest of the world has moved on. To be fair, there are clear advantages in keeping with one kind of rail technology, and in through-routing service at Lougheed. But, eventually, Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT in its lesser corridors, or else limit the extent of its rail system. And that seems to make some TransLink people very nervous.
A regular corespondent (a professional) told me in earnest about the funding issues;
It is a house of cards. Madmen are in charge.
To be blunt, the region cannot continue to build with light metro and TransLink has zero credibility planning for cheaper options like LRT. The regional politicians have been groomed by TransLink like a con artist grooming a mark. It now seems the Metro mayors are heading directly into a financial iceberg, by continuing to plan for the much more costly light metro, instead of much cheaper and more effective LRT.
Building SkyTrain today, is leaving a debt bomb for tomorrow.
$4.6 billion is a lot of cash, but in metro Vancouver, $4.6 billion (well that is the amount funded) buys you a mere 12.8 km of the decidedly obsolete light metro system, now called Movia Automatic Light Metro, used on the Millennium and Expo Lines.
So much money, for so little transit.
It maybe impertinent to point out that the City of Caen, France opened a 16 km tramway which cost a mere CAD $373 million.
So here is a “reality check” on transit.
The public (taxpayer) has anted up over $10 billion so far for the SkyTrain light-metro system. The province/region could only afford a new transit line every decade or so. So now, we have “funded” (read, taxpayer funded) $4.6 billion, which is supposed to build 12.8 km of line. This is almost half the amount of money spent for the entire system to date.
This means the region will get 12.6 km of light metro for the next decade and counting!
So let us look at unfunded projects.
1) The Expo Line rehab, which is needed before the line is extended to Langley to increase capacity beyond its legal operating certificate of 15,000 pphpd. This cost is between $2 billion to $3 billion.
2) The UBC subway extension from Arbutus to UBC, $3 billion to $4 billion.
3) The Langley extension from Fleetwood, $1.6 to $2 billion.
A honourable mention must also be made for:
1) The Canada line rehab, to increase its capacity beyond 9,000 pphpd, $1.5 billion to $2 billion and must be done before any thought of extending the line.
2) The North Shore rapid transit transit link, $5 billion or more including a new crossing.
We are looking at a minimum of $6.6 billion to extend the light metro network to UBC and Langley
Not going to happen any time soon, as the current rate of spending around $2.5 billion every decade to build and extend the light metro network, one can see the current plans completed in about four decades! This is the fools game, the Provincial NDP and Liberals, metro mayors and their various bureaucracies and TransLink is playing with the public!
And what about the Fraser Valley, Vancouver island and the hurtlands, which is just about everywhere else in the province?
Well, it seems they can whistle in the wind, the majority of seats for the legislature are in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
As our most decidedly dishonest Mayors and bureaucrats promise transit nirvana, the reality is that Vancouver and surrey will get light-metro extensions which will do little alleviating congestion and will further balkanize our bus system which now is designed to feed the light metro to pretend it is successful!
As the current light metro system has done little in attracting the motorist from the car, building more and expecting different results, for the taxpayer , is scary stupid.
And then there are the operating costs, which is about $400 million annually for the light metro system, no one has given a thought to that. Extending the light metro network to UBC and Langley will add at least another $100 million to the annual SkyTrain subsidy
Climate change be damned we are building light metro to placate land speculators and land developers by building light metro to act as a driver for condo towers and easy profits for political friends. Political payoffs come before the taxpayer’s ability to pay and Climate Change in BC.
I am gobsmacked at the base hypocrisy, or worse dishonesty by our regional and provincial politicians on transit.
Could the Broadway subway become another Charleroi? Huge costs to build, no money to operate it and is left to rot unused for decades.
Mott MacDonald to study major new bridge for Vancouver
7 October 2019 | By GCR Staff
UK-headquartered engineering consultant Mott MacDonald has been picked to study the technical feasibility of a major infrastructure scheme in Vancouver, Canada: a high-capacity fixed-link transit crossing over the Burrard Inlet.
Politicians believe such a link is needed to ease traffic congestion building up between Vancouver and the growing cities on the inlet’s North Shore, including West Vancouver and North Vancouver.
Urbanisation there has historically followed a single-family dwelling model with the car assumed as the dominant mode of transport. But as the cities have grown, congestion has increased on the inlet’s two road bridges, including the famous Lion’s Gate Bridge.
“Traffic is a significant problem for people on the North Shore and finding solutions is important to our government,” said Claire Trevena, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure for the province of British Columbia (BC). “This feasibility study will explore ways to connect our communities better, shorten commute times and cut down on carbon pollution.”
Expected to finish in 2020, Mott MacDonald’s study will be undertaken in two stages.
The first will look at possible options for a new fixed link considering topography, geotechnical and structural aspects, as well as its cost and ridership projections. Out of this will emerge a short list of alignment options for the link.
The second stage would provide a more detailed engineering and planning review of the short-listed options. Affordable housing will also be evaluated.
“Years of hikes in housing costs have forced people to live further from where they work, resulting in longer commutes and traffic congestion issues,” said Bowinn Ma, a local member of BC’s legislative assembly and chair of a transportation planning committee.
Mary-Ann Booth, mayor of West Vancouver, said: “A fixed link for rapid transit will take years to implement, so we need to start thinking about it now.”
Image: Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet, with its two existing road bridges including the Lion’s Gate Bridge in the distance (Flying Penguin/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Once again the Massey Tunnel is in the news and every political hobby-horse is in play!
Delta South MLA, farmer Ian Paton, wants the original Liberal inspired 10 lane bridge, which somehow will magically fix gridlock, while at the same time ignoring the fact that there is no new bridge crossing the North Arm of the Fraser river to South Vancouver/Burnaby. This means highway 99 in Richmond will be turned into a massive parking lot.
So, for three or four billion dollars we will have moved gridlock about 5 km.
It does not matter a bridge or tunnel unless another bridge or tunnel is built from Richmond to South Vancouver/Burnaby, gridlock will reign supreme.
The following map is nothing more than a conceptual idea what should be done as what the Ministry of Transportation wanted to do back in the 90’s before the Liberal kow-towed to the Port Authority to remove the perfectly good tunnel so Cape Max. tankers and colliers could travel up the Fraser to load Montana coal and Braken oil.
Those plans are now dead and so should the push for replacing the Massey tunnel!
The real issue is that TransLink, as incompetent as ever, has failed to provide a user friendly bus service from South Delta to Vancouver and the same is also true about buses from South Surrey/Whiterock. This is because of a very questionable agreement between TransLink and the SNC Lavalin lead consortium operating the Canada line P-3. This secret agreement forces all Richmond, South Delta, South Surrey and Whiterock buses to forcefully transfer customers onto the Canada Line at Bridgeport Station to pretend the under-built, grossly expensive Canada Line is somehow successful.
That’s right, SNC Lavalin involved in another transit fiasco. Is there not one politician who not afraid to rid ourselves of this loathsome company?
Maybe a daily 15 minute 602 service, from 6 am to midnight from Tsawwassen to downtown Vancouver, would attract a portion of car drivers from South Delta, as it is the kind of service transit customers want!
At present, TransLink and the mayor’s Council on Transit and the provincial NDP (as well as the Liberals) have shown zero interest in improving South Fraser bus service. All they care about is building a politically prestigious bridge for photo-ops before an election.
(Courtesy Integrity BC – green is the George Massey tunnel))
As one can see, the demand for traffic using the Massey tunnel has hovered around the 80,000 for over thirty years. This should pose some very interesting questions for the Bridge Lobby, which has been so successful in deliberately misstating their case to the mainstream media; especially the old saw that gridlock is growing yearly, which it is obviously not!
Is it not time for honest debate and just as honest planning?
So, despite the hype and hoopla of SkyTrain being a driver for increased density, it is now being seen as the harbinger of urban sprawl as affordable housing is demolished and in its place unaffordable condos in towers are built.
As rents exceed income and combined incomes of families (one now needs an income of $140,000 a year to afford an average new downtown condo), poorer families escape to the transit poor ‘burbs’, where housing is affordable.
The city it seems, can only get more market rentals at presumably unaffordable rates and there is no real benefit, except low income families fleeing the City Vancouver.
So, what do metro mayor’s do, they double down build more of the hugely expensive MALM proprietary light metro of course, to be used as a driver to tear down more affordable housing to build more unaffordable housing. This is called renoviction in polite society; in not so polite society it is called profiteering.
$4.6 billion to build 12.8 km of light metro on routes that do not have the ridership to sustain it, only shows the complete ignorance of our regional mayors, the Minister of Transportation, the minister responsible for TransLink, TransLink’s CEO and TransLink’s planners, and the Engineering society as a whole!
Such wilful ignoring of the facts boils down to malfeasance on a grand scale.
In just a short decade from now, civic and provincial politicians are going to wake from their transit stupor, too late, and see the City Vancouver as a vast wasteland for the very rich and the very poor, with roads and highways choked with commuters driving from where living is affordable to work where it is unaffordable and the $20 billion of taxpayer’s money spent on the light metro system will be seen as another politically driven mega-project gone wrong.
We must go back to the basics, only seven of the now called MALM proprietary railways have been sold, with only three being seriously used for urban transport. Not one has been sold in over ten years and Metro Vancouver is the only region in the world that exclusively uses light metro for urban transport.
In an age of unprecedented investment in urban transport, no one has copied Vancouver or its exclusive use of light metro and now it is embarrassing apparent why!
Mr. Villegas has a degree in architecture from UBC (B Arch); a diploma in Building Technology from BCIT; and a bachelor in Liberal Arts from SFU. He has practiced since 1985, completing several downtown revitalization projects in the Lower Mainland and throughout British Columbia worked 3 years as a consultant to LCA Portland, a new urbanism firm.
BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER AT 10 YEAR LOWS
The City of Vancouver led the way on Regional Planning for maintaining ‘our high quality of life’ building the Skytrain-and-Towers; hosting a Class B Expo (1986) and the Winter Olympics (2010). Now we are feeling the blows of serious errors in planning:
Business counts are the lowest in 10 years;
There is an out-migration of middle-income families looking for affordable housing;
Mentally ill, street-involved citizens are being housed in tents at Oppenheimer Park;
Streets and the sidewalks almost everywhere are in a bad state of disrepair; and
The school system is ‘sputtering’ at the elementary and high school levels for lack of funding.
… Could bankruptcy be next?
The Regional Plans singled out for special attention the single family house—denigrating it as the agent of sprawl—and the private automobile—berating it for polluting the air and causing congestion. Yet, the drafters of the Regional Plans completely missed identifying the electric car as the ‘Urban Innovation of the Century.’ A new technology that will clean the air and make of the ‘Age of Combustion’ a bygone era.
Cities looking to succeed in the present climate must embrace the new technology and leverage it into a bright, green future. As well, the failed ideologies of the Regional Plans must be let go.
Following on the direction of the regional government, for over 30 years, Vancouver councils went about finding ways for discouraging automobile use—including taxing fuel, hiking parking fees, and closing road lanes to cars. They also set about redrawing neighborhood plans to identify potential tower sites. The concrete-and-glass behemoths are energy hogs with huge carbon footprints that cannot compete with the vernacular building forms in the new, combustion-free era. City initiatives based on the failed Regional Plans have rained unwanted results in the neighborhoods while failing to reduce traffic congestion, or deliver clean air. Then, there is the problem that the Regional Plans—far from sustaining ‘our high quality of life’—have driven us head-long into a housing crisis. There is more pollution everyday, and more traffic congestion. Sometimes the arterials are choked all day long. But, now—and for over 20 years—median income households cannot afford to own a house in this city. That condition has now spread from the centre to blanket the entire region.
The effects of the failed Regional Plans are clearly visible in Downtown Vancouver. Here, the new restrictions and closures have hung up a big metaphorical sign proclaiming, “Downtown is Not Open for Business.” If you can’t get here by walking, or on transit, then don’t bother to come at all. In response, people have stayed away in droves. The loss of affordable housing in the downtown core has further stymied business growth. The empty luxury condominiums pay city-tax, but they don’t spend dollars at downtown shops.
Turning downtown into a residential and hotel concrete tower Nirvana for the tourism and convention trade—complete with casinos for Chinese money laundering—has caused the regional capital to lose its competitive advantage. Save for tourists and conventioneers, and office workers at lunch hour, visitors arriving downtown feel unwelcome and many have simply stopped coming. One visible result is papered-over storefronts in increasing numbers on Robson Street and Gastown.
The bars from the 2010 Olympics never closed down after the crowds went home. Granville Street Mall today is an unrecognizable mutation of its former self. Block after block of Granville Street is host to booze joints and boozers. Not exactly an exemplary model of supporting high levels of social functioning; not exactly a place to take the family. The sidewalks and the streets around Granville Mall are filthy. The trees were cut down for the Olympics. The new trees are small and scrawny. And everywhere the traffic is a mess. We did all this to build towers—to add density! Yet, Downtown the residential towers are mostly dark, setting the mood for the entire place.
Meanwhile, the same animus driving against private transportation has government falling behind on building Modern Tram and automobile infrastructure—including new highways and bridges. These missing projects are now the new drag on the economy.
As we all should know, the Caisse is the main finical backer of the Canada Line faux P-3 and using the BC Liberal P-3 process as a template, the Caisse is now funding Montreal’s highly controversial REM light metro project.
As built, the Canada Line is a dwarf metro system that uses electrical multiple units running in pairs and with the station platforms are a mere 40 metres long (half the length of the Expo and Millennium lines), gives the Canada line roughly half, the capacity as the other two light metro lines.
Has Vancouver’s mainstream media done any investigative reporting on who owns the property along the Canada line? What profits were made and by who,by building a substandard metro.
Has there been any investigation of property deals being made on the Broadway subway? Who is making substantial profits on the $3 billion transit line?
In short, NO! Our media does not do any investigative reporting on transit issues and pretends they don’t exist.
There is more investigative reporting done by the Montreal Gazette on this one issue than the Vancouver Sun has done on the SkyTrain light metro system since it was forced upon the taxpayer in the early 80’s.
Sadly, light-metro lines are built for one reason only, land development. Translation, quick profits for political insiders, land developers and land speculators.
What is being exposed in Montreal, is kept well hidden by our media.
Caisse’s stake in A40 REM station troubling, probe finds
Deep financial ties in St-Laurent industrial enclave leave critics asking: Was the stop chosen to serve transit or real estate priorities?
The future A40 station of the Réseau express métropolitain will rise on a site where its builder, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, lost money in a multi-million-dollar real estate boondoggle it tried to conceal in the mid-1990s.
But that isn’t the only thing the Caisse, the province’s largest pension fund investor, hasn’t told Quebecers about the location for the station on the $6.3-billion, 67-kilometre automated transit network it will own and operate.
Unbeknownst to the public, which is paying half of the cost to build the REM, the Caisse has been investing in the industrial enclave that surrounds the future “Station A40” for decades, an investigation by the Montreal Gazette has found.
In fact, the Caisse’s real estate ties in what’s known as the Hodge-Lebeau neighbourhood, an area hemmed in by Highways 40 and 15 and the railway tracks on the edge of St-Laurent borough, run long in terms of time span, far in terms of square footage and deep in terms of financial investment.
And yet three transportation experts consulted by the Montreal Gazette agree that the A40 stop, which the Caisse plans to shoehorn in between the existing Mont-Royal and Montpellier stations of the Deux-Montagnes rail line, isn’t even necessary. The Caisse plans the new stop as a transfer point for passengers on the Mascouche commuter train line, but the experts say the transfer can be done without adding a station.
The newspaper’s findings raise a troubling question, say critics of the REM and its model as a publicly funded, privately owned public transit project: Did the Caisse choose the path for the REM and the A40 station to serve mass transit priorities or to maximize real estate gains?
“I think there are hidden real estate interests,” said Jean-François Turcotte, a rail transportation specialist who presented a brief opposing the project at the 2016 public hearings on the REM held by the province’s independent environmental-impact assessment board, the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement.
“You can ask whether there were other places to put a transfer station. The answer is yes. And in terms of distance, it’s much too close to the Mont-Royal and Montpellier stations to have a third station. It’s not efficient.”
“Paradoxically, in the West (Island), no REM stations are planned at St-Jean and St-Charles Blvds., two major transportation corridors. No way to develop real estate in these areas, I suppose?”
No one would guess at the Caisse’s omnipresence in the Hodge-Lebeau neighbourhood to look at the sprawling lots occupied by low-rise buildings dating mostly from the 1960s and 1970s — and neither would anyone checking the current ownership of the buildings.
Yet a property search reveals the Caisse once owned about 20 buildings in the 1.5-square-kilometre enclave through numbered companies and other subsidiaries. It has also dabbled in mortgage-lending on some others.
The records also reveal the Caisse transitioned in the late 1990s from ownership to background involvement as a mortgage lender or shareholder — or both — for the area’s two most prolific building owners.
Cominar Real Estate Investment Trust, one of the largest owners of non-residential properties in Canada, owns a numbered company that in turn owns nine of the properties that once belonged to the Caisse on the east side of the Deux-Montagnes railway tracks that cleave through the neighbourhood. The holdings include a row of buildings on Deslauriers St., directly across the street from the future station that will straddle the tracks.
The Caisse, meanwhile, owns a nearly five per cent stake in the publicly traded Cominar.
The Caisse sold the Deslauriers buildings to Dundee Real Estate in 1999 and financed Dundee’s purchase. Cominar became the owner in 2012.
The other major owner in the enclave is Olymbec, a private company with properties across Quebec and Canada. The Caisse financed Olymbec’s purchase of nine buildings in the enclave, most of them on Stinson and Hodge Sts. and on Montpellier Blvd. on the west side of the tracks, in 1996, 1997 and 1999.
Olymbec received new financing in 2016 and 2017 from the Caisse and its mortgage-lending subsidiary, Otéra Capital, for all but one of the buildings.
Olymbec also bought a building on the west side without Caisse financing in 2015.
Besides the Olymbec properties, the Caisse has had financial interests in four other buildings on the west side of the tracks near the future A40 station that its subsidiary, CDPQ Infra Inc., will build for the REM.
And SNC-Lavalin, which counts the Caisse as its largest shareholder, also owns a building in the Hodge-Lebeau enclave, on the east side. SNC-Lavalin is part of the consortium that won the engineering and construction contracts for the REM.
The upshot is that the Caisse has had financial interests in 37 buildings in the neighbourhood over the years, about one-third of all of the properties in the area.
Currently, the Caisse has financial interests in 18 buildings in the enclave through its mortgage-lending and shares in companies, including properties that are as close as can be to the future A40 station without being expropriated for it.
In real estate parlance, that’s known as “synergy.”
And a major redevelopment of the enclave tied to the REM is indeed being quietly planned, the Montreal Gazette has learned.
BySeattle Times staff reporter
(Courtesy Integrity BC)
The real issue is that TransLink, as incompetent as ever, has failed to provide a user friendly bus service from South Delta to Vancouver and the same is also true about buses from South Surrey/Whiterock. This is because of a very questionable agreement between TransLink and the SNC Lavalin lead consortium operating the Canada line P-3. This secret agreement forces all Richmond, South Delta, South Surrey and Whiterock buses to forcefully transfer customers onto the Canada Line at Bridgeport Station to pretend the under-built, grossly expensive Canada Line is somehow successful.
(Courtesy Integrity BC – green is the George Massey tunnel))
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