Vancouver City Councillor

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 →]

Three hundred members of UNITE-HERE Local 40 have reached agreement with YVR contractor HMS Host, ending a strike/lockout that began last week.

The agreement means they will be on the job when almost 40,000 visitors try to leave town after the Closing Ceremonies. Both sides expressed satisfaction with the settlement, which reduces the threat that union members won’t be able to access new jobs at YVR concessions when some existing restaurants close.

From the Rev. Gary Paterson, the minister at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church, this remarkable sermon on transfiguration, sports replacing religion and the mystery of Olympic spirit: “something bigger than the hustle and bustle and protecting the borders, a dream . . . ”

From an initial scepticism and ambivalence, Paterson found himself changing his perspective at the torch relay and then at the opening ceremonies: “You could feel the hunger in those 60,000 people, to go higher, to be more, to be better than we normally than we are. It was a mountain top peak moment, when people said it isn’t impossible.”

Paterson, partner of councillor Tim Stevenson, would definitely own the pulpit in a preaching Olympics.

First the BCCLA hailing the respect for civil rights during the Games, now this Angus Reid poll showing 70 percent of Metro and Sea to Sky residents now believe the event will have a positive impact on Canada, British Columbia and Vancouver. That’s up 10 points in a month.

Perhaps even more significant: 56 percent said the Games were exciting and not inconveniencing them, up six percent in a month. Thirty-nine percent of transit users say it’s taking them longer to get to work, but only 18 percent of drivers have the same complaint.

Motion to make it unanimous?