Category — Transportation

There may be more transit investment news in what is missing from today’s provincial budget than from what is stated.

As expected, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure budget plan spells out Victoria’s commitment to build the Evergreen Line to connect Coquitlam and Burnaby via Port Moody with new Skytrain service.

The estimated cost of the project is $1.4 billion, with construction slated to begin in 2011 and end four years later. Victoria is kicking in $410 million and Ottawa has pledged $417 million, leaving a hefty $600 million bill for Translink to pick  up starting next year.

The ministry plan helpfully sets out the combined federal and Translink capital contribution requirement on page 30: $568 million by 2013. The problem is, Translink will need a new funding source — or impose major fare, property and gas increases — to meet the goal. (This reality may provide a clue to the meaning of the Throne Speech pledge to “fix Translink.”)

The Evergreen Line is expected to carry only 70,000 riders a day by 2021, six years after opening. The $2 billion Canada Line, by contrast, was expected to achieve twice that number by 2013, three years after opening. It hit that number within 90 days and has surged up to nearly 300,000 a day during the Olympics.

How will Victoria force Metro Vancouver municipalities to fill the funding gap? Time will tell, but today’s budget sets the terms for the debate to come. [Read more →]

The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts: part of Vancouver's future or relics of a project the city rejected?

In honour of the today’s shutdown of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, for the first time since their construction in 1971, I have created this small archive of background information and history on the lower mainland’s shortest freeway.

More contributions are welcome.

Unreported in BC, as far as I know, was the very significant news that the Washington and Oregon State high-speed rail supporters landed nearly $USD600 million in investments along more than 400 miles of track to speed up Amtrak service.

This massive investment will take the states much closer to the long-term goal of 240-km an hour high speed rail.

Seattle rail advocates, like the Cascadia Center, have done a better job of advancing Vancouver’s role as the northern terminus of the route that we have. That must change after the 2010 Games.

The drive to expand and improve Vancouver’s separated bike routes will continue next week as council debates this proposal to create a new downtown connection on the Dunsmuir Viaduct.

The two-way separated bike lane will be created from a “lost lane” that was quietly removed several years ago and never restored. (Remember the outcry? Probably not: drivers never noticed.)

The report also authorizes staff to analyze other options to improve downtown cycle safety with additional separated lanes, a trickier proposition given the requirement to take space from traffic or parking.

Also percolating behind the scenes at City Hall: a close look at a new proposal emerging from the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition to create a cycle-pedestrian pathway along the Arbutus Corridor. Such a project would need co-operation from Canadian Pacific Railways.