The Evergreen rapid-transit line controversy

Mayors of Port Moody and Coquitlam have different views of federal budget.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised in his January 27 budget speech that federal funds “will flow” for the proposed $1.4-billion Evergreen rapid-transit line to Coquitlam. That has the mayor of Coquitlam, Richard Stewart, in a celebratory mood. “I’m ecstatic,” Stewart told the Georgia Straight on January 28. “We popped a bottle of Champagne yesterday.”

However, Port Moody mayor Joe Trasolini says he’s not convinced that federal funds will actually materialize because the Conservative government didn’t include Evergreen Line funding as a line item in the budget.

In a phone interview with the Straight on January 27 following the budget speech, Trasolini pointed out that the budget pledged $407 million for improvements to Via Rail.

“There is a word of support, which is in fact what we had before,” Trasolini said. “My expectations today was for a line item for the $400 million of their third of the funding formula. I didn’t get that.”

The proposed rapid-transit line would run from Lougheed Mall to Coquitlam via Port Moody. Most of the area is represented in Ottawa by Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, who did not return a call from the Straight by deadline. TransLink has pledged $400 million for the proposed project, while the B.C. government has promised $410 million. The as-yet-unknown private partner that builds the line is expected to cover $200 million of the cost.

Proponents hope that Ottawa will provide $400 million, but Trasolini claimed that only $67 million has been committed. “I’m very disappointed,” Trasolini said of the budget. “This is the one item we were waiting for in the northeast sector.”

Stewart cited three reasons why he thinks Ottawa will furnish another $330 million for what he described as a “SkyTrain-like project”: Flaherty’s comment in the budget speech; the federal government’s Building Canada program, announced in 2007, which provides $33 billion for infrastructure renewal over seven years; and a Conservative promise in the 2008 budget to contribute $500 million for transit and rolling-stock improvements in Vancouver, Peterborough, and Montreal.

“I’m not going to call the minister a liar when he says the budget includes $500 million for those three transit projects,” Stewart said. “I’ve always taken the position that when a senior level of government announces that they are giving you something, you say, ”˜Thank you.’ You don’t say, ”˜Bullshit.’ ”

Trasolini, on the other hand, expressed skepticism. “I’m the one who has been around for five elections in a row,” Trasolini said, referring to his longevity as mayor.

Vancouver Kingsway NDP MP Don Davies echoed Trasolini’s criticism, saying the budget is “explicitly unequivocal” about expenditures. “It does not say that Evergreen will be funded,” Davies told the Straight in a phone interview. Gerard Kennedy, the federal Liberal critic for infrastructure, communities, and cities, did not return a call by deadline.

Meanwhile, a local critic of SkyTrain systems, Malcolm Johnston, told the Straight in a phone interview that there won’t be sufficient ridership to justify a SkyTrain line to Coquitlam. He also predicted that the proposed SkyTrain-style project will end up costing much more than $1.4 billion.

In 2005, three Danish professors at Aalborg University—Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Sí¸ren L. Buhl—published a paper in the Journal of the American Planning Association that looked at more than 210 transportation-infrastructure projects in 14 countries worth US$59 billion.

For nine of the 10 rail projects studied, passenger forecasts were overestimated by an average of 106 percent. “The causes of inaccuracy in forecasts are different for rail and road projects, with political causes playing a larger role for rail than for road,” the researchers wrote.