Editor:
Several mayoralty candidates in Surrey and Langley are advocating a switch from LRT to SkyTrain and seem to be ignorant of the facts, contemptuous of the taxpayer or both.
First of all, the Innovia SkyTrain Lines – Expo, Millennium/Evergreen Lines – needs very expensive upgrades to increase capacity beyond the current Transport Canada’s Operating Certificate’s maximum allowable capacity of 15,000 persons per hour per direction.
The cost of this upgrade and refurbishment of the Innova lines is now estimated between $3 billion and $3.5 billion.
If that cost is not enough, there is more. The federal infrastructure money for the LRT project isn’t transferable to another project, because of the PPP (public, public partnership) program that grants all federal transit dollars, makes that illegal.
Whether they realized it or not, TransLink is already accepting design/engineering tenders from interested consortia for the LRT design. Changing now means everyone involved on the federal and TransLink side of the competitive process can be sued for bad-faith negotiating.
It’s messy and the taxpayers always get killed.
The involved companies in each consortium are now going out and getting private loans and financing – a major requirement of the federal PPP program – to take on all the expected building costs as well as all legal liability costs for the project, which can add up to 25 per cent of the entire project’s cost.
If a politician or a group of them tries to change the project scope now, wow, watch the lawsuits fly!
Where is TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond on this? The TransLink board, are they aware of this? Do any of the regional mayors actually have a clue with our transit planning?
Seriously, answers are needed now, before the new round of politicians are elected, which we will be stuck with for four years, exposing the taxpayer with tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and judgments.
Malcolm Johnston, Delta
