The Official Transit Thread

[Common sense]

You call that a party train?

THIS is a party train.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STNWc7Rlpfk

That's not a fun party.

[nitronuts]

Asinine move from Port Moody's Mayor Trasolini because the Evergreen Line hasn't been built yet

City vetoes development, citing lack of infrastructure

Coquitlam NOW

Friday, December 11, 2009

Port Moody council stuck by its no-new-development-without-the-Evergreen-Line edict, defeating a proposed Henry Street development at Tuesday's meeting.

"I made a commitment to the residents of Port Moody that I will not be supporting new developments," said Mayor Joe Trasolini. "And this is a new development."

The proposal would have seen an 11-storey, 149-unit building constructed in the 3000 block of Henry Street, in the empty lot next to the Terravista condos. The proponent promised a condo terraced into the hillside, using only 25 per cent of the property for the building and leaving the remaining 0.6 hectares (1.5 acres) for park. It was to include a communal car system, terraced green space with rainwater being collected and used for irrigation, and ample bike storage.

Although council members saw merit in the design and sustainability of the development, Trasolini said, they could not go ahead with the proposal due to traffic and density concerns. He added that these are problems that would be alleviated by the Evergreen Line and Murray-Clarke Connector.

"Further growth in Port Moody, with the lack of infrastructure, is not sustainable."

Meanwhile, residents who spoke out at the public hearing were torn over the development plan, with those from Terravista opposed and many echoing council's concerns about density and traffic.

However, Wendy Swalwell, president of the Moody Centre Community Association, said her group supports the project.

"I think it's very forward thinking. We've talked about a blanket issue of no more development because of infrastructure, but you know we need some help ... We would like to see something of this calibre built [now], rather than later on when you need to meet your density requirements and think, 'OK, let's slap a highrise somewhere.'"

Timothy Ankenman, the proposal's architect, said after the meeting that he was disappointed with council's decision. After two and a half years of working on the project, he's not sure his client will want to bring the proposal forward again once the city begins allowing development, which may be a long way off.

"Till infrastructure is addressed I cannot justify any more development in our city," said Coun. Bob Elliott. "We have no infrastructure, we've been promised over and over again ... we might as well forget about it. It won't happen in my lifetime and it won't happen in my kids' lifetime, as far as I'm concerned."

Trasolini, Elliott and Coun. Karen Rockwell voted against the development, while Couns. Mike Clay, Gerry Nuttall and Diana Dilworth voted in favour. Motions are defeated on a tie, however, which happened because Coun. Meghan Lahti was absent.

© Coquitlam Now 2009

[Canuck_4_Life]

That makes zero sense. I say that as a Burnaby resident, having to hear Corrigan whine about every other transit related development that may benefit Burnaby residents in an indirect manner.

So, what happens when the line is started? Trasolini, or whoever is in charge, hands out building permits like they're going out of style, thus creating more traffic mayhem?

Nice logic there...............

[silverpig]

I wonder which way that absent lady would have voted.

[nitronuts]

The Evergreen Line will be built over the next 4 years for a 2013 completion. Construction WILL start in late-2010. This project will most definitely go ahead. But politics within the provincial government is taking priority, in that the Liberals are positioning the opening date of the new line to coincide with their 2013 re-election campaign.

Regardless, it'll take 3-4 years to build it.

[old_time_hockey]

There's nothing wrong with P3's. It's a proven method of funding and running infrastructure. Of course, if you look only at the worst examples you could say otherwise and it is an extremely biased political view you have there.

The problem at hand with the Canada Line is not the concept of a public-private partnership, but rather the contract RAVCO made with the private sector. The main issue is that infrastructure is a public good, and handling over a public good to the private sector requires significant public oversight in both design and operations. That never materialized.

Successful P3's for rapid transit systems include the Hong Kong MTR and the London Docklands Railway.

I will say that because of InTransitBC's $750-million, we won't have to pay banks ridiculous interest rates for loans over the next few decades (the Expo and Millennium Line's will wind up costing about $5-billion for the BC provincial treasury).

Go ask anyone in the UK what they think of P3's...especially hospitals. The rest of the world has already done P3s and are moving away from them.

So you are OK with a company from outside of the province coming in and making a profit and then taking those profits out of the region?

[nitronuts]

Go ask anyone in the UK what they think of P3's...especially hospitals. The rest of the world has already done P3s and are moving away from them.

So you are OK with a company from outside of the province coming in and making a profit and then taking those profits out of the region?

You remind me of an Minnesota couple visiting the city, riding the Canada Line this past summer. A local started a conversation with them, and then asked their perspective on Obama's health care plan. Their response was: "Well, you must know what it's like up here"....inferring that what right-wing pundits in the states were saying about "socialist" Canadian health care were all true. In other words, left-wing paranoia about the corporate boogeyman; right-wing paranoia about government intervention that will lead to communism or whatever. Obviously, with narrow-minded extremists like yourself you'd never be able to see a middle ground.

P3's work. Simple as that. There's a huge grey area when it comes to health care, but when it comes to rail transport it absolutely works if done correctly. Not even sure why you brought up health care as it's an absolutely different and much more complex P3 structure.

I care little about profits going out, rather I care about the actual service and end result. The Canada Line P3 clearly does not work, but it does not mean all P3's are flawed.

[inane]

You remind me of an Minnesota couple visiting the city, riding the Canada Line this past summer. A local started a conversation with them, and then asked their perspective on Obama's health care plan. Their response was: "Well, you must know what it's like up here"....inferring that what right-wing pundits in the states were saying about "socialist" Canadian health care were all true. In other words, left-wing paranoia about the corporate boogeyman; right-wing paranoia about government intervention that will lead to communism or whatever. Obviously, with narrow-minded extremists like yourself you'd never be able to see a middle ground.

P3's work. Simple as that. There's a huge grey area when it comes to health care, but when it comes to rail transport it absolutely works if done correctly. Not even sure why you brought up health care as it's an absolutely different and much more complex P3 structure.

I care little about profits going out, rather I care about the actual service and end result. The Canada Line P3 clearly does not work, but it does not mean all P3's are flawed.

[ronthecivil]

The Evergreen Line will be built over the next 4 years for a 2013 completion. Construction WILL start in late-2010. This project will most definitely go ahead. But politics within the provincial government is taking priority, in that the Liberals are positioning the opening date of the new line to coincide with their 2013 re-election campaign.

Regardless, it'll take 3-4 years to build it.

LOL

Who's funding it?

[ronthecivil]

Go ask anyone in the UK what they think of P3's...especially hospitals. The rest of the world has already done P3s and are moving away from them.

So you are OK with a company from outside of the province coming in and making a profit and then taking those profits out of the region?

I can't vouch for healthcare, but I assure you that if anything the P3 model is become increasingly prevelent worldwide at least when it comes to road and rail projects, and this is worldwide. The only thing that has slowed it even slightly is the global credit crunch, and that will prove to be a bump in the road. Companies ultimately can't turn down a long term funding in exchange for an initial investment strategy. Goverments can't turn down getting someone else to put the money up to build their "legacy" projects. You can complain all you want about it but rest assured it's firmly entrenced as one of the contract models now. Instead of simply giving bad examples (it's just as easy to come up with examples of purely run publicly sector contracts, take the waterworks tunneling on the north shore as an example) of P3s, I would suggest looking at the good examples as well.

Publicly funded projects are not always good.

Privately funded projects are not always bad.

You have to look at each project individually and weigh the merits of each.

[old_time_hockey]

http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/01/29/the-utter-stupidity-of-p3s-in-bc/

January 29th, 2009

The BC government has been insisting on P3s (so-called public-private partnerships where the private sector builds and operates infrastructure) all over the province. We at the CCPA have consistently argued that this practice is foolish: more complicated, more expensive, and leaving taxpayers holding the bag if anything bad should happen. As a companion piece to the recent report on P3s by the Ontario Auditor General, the BC office of the Canadian Union of Public Employees released today a report on P3s in BC by forensic accountants Ron Parks and Rosanne Terhart. Drawing on access to information requests, Parks crunches the numbers on four P3 projects: the Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre, the Sea-to-Sky Highway Improvement, the Academic Ambulatory Care Centre (Diamond Centre) and the Canada Line

The report is timely because of the latest news about a P3 plan to twin the Port Mann bridge (that would be the Trans-Canada crossing between Surrey and the Burrard peninsula including Vancouver and other inner suburbs). This is a highly controversial project opposed by environmentalists, urban planners and the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, among others, because there is no evidence that highway expansion actually reduces traffic congestion for more than a year or two. Former Vancouver city councillor and urban guru, Gordon Price, has asked repeatedly for anyone to give a single example of this type of thing working; he is still waiting.

The twinning project merely plays on frustrations of the single-occupant vehicle owners who hate sitting in traffic to cross the bridge. The timing of the P3 was to get shovels in the ground for election time to win the vote in Surrey, BC's fastest growing municipality, and to make it impossible to reverse if the provincial Liberals should lose the May election. But the end result will inevitably be even more unsustainable suburban development down the Fraser Valley, probably on current agricultural land, that will within a couple years of its opening lead back to the status quo of bridge congestion, plus even more congestion closer to the city of Vancouver where it is not possible to widen the roads.

Putting environmental reasons aside for a moment, the economic crisis in the financial markets has now led the government to step in as one of the lenders for the project, rather than bailing on the P3 and building the bridge itself. Savour that for a moment: the public sector contracted this beast out because of the alleged superiority of private financing, and when that private financing proved unavailable, the public sector is bailing out the profits of the contractor. Those profits will come from tolls on the bridge, which they say will be $3 a pop but will inevitably be higher due to higher costs of construction. The province justifies tolling a piece of the Trans-Canada Highway because there is another crossing of the Fraser downriver over the aged Patullo Bridge. Oh, did I mention the Patullo Bridge was recently closed for two weeks for repairs when it caught fire.

Sigh. Here is some of the Sun's coverage:

"The B.C. government said Wednesday it is coming to the rescue of its private partners in the Port Mann Bridge-twinning project, lending the consortium as much as $750 million.

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon, citing the global financial crisis, said the government had agreed to provide one-third of the money needed to twin the bridge and expand parts of Highway 1.

Falcon would not say how much the province will put in, but the project's financiers had reportedly been seeking about $2.3 billion in debt financing for the project, meaning the provincial contribution is likely to be in the neighbourhood of $750 million.

When it was formally announced by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2006, the cost of the project was pegged at $1.5 billion.

Until now, the deal was meant to be financed entirely by a private consortium selected to design, build and operate the project through a public-private partnership.

Called Connect BC Development Group, the consortium featured Australian-based Macquarie Group, an international toll-road operator and investor, which has encountered serious financial difficulty as a result of the global credit crisis.

Macquarie Group had been struggling recently to raise the financing for the project, and this month the province granted the company an extension to complete a deal."

So one of the groups that Macqarie Group (an Aussie company)was talking to about helping to secure the financing was the Bank of Scotland...the same bank that the British Government had to bail out. So this company wanted to use British tax payer bailout money to design, build and operate a bridge, pay back the money with interest and toll the road to make it's money back and then a profit. What part of this sounds logical? The Liberal Government doesn't stop to think about the big picture. It is a P3 no matter what the circumstance is. And it is mostly just for spite...not sound economics.

You should read the report by Ron Parks and Rosanne Terhart.

Edited December 14, 2009 by old_time_hockey

[JonnyDraft]

You remind me of an Minnesota couple visiting the city, riding the Canada Line this past summer. A local started a conversation with them, and then asked their perspective on Obama's health care plan. Their response was: "Well, you must know what it's like up here"....inferring that what right-wing pundits in the states were saying about "socialist" Canadian health care were all true. In other words, left-wing paranoia about the corporate boogeyman; right-wing paranoia about government intervention that will lead to communism or whatever. Obviously, with narrow-minded extremists like yourself you'd never be able to see a middle ground.

P3's work. Simple as that. There's a huge grey area when it comes to health care, but when it comes to rail transport it absolutely works if done correctly. Not even sure why you brought up health care as it's an absolutely different and much more complex P3 structure.

I care little about profits going out, rather I care about the actual service and end result. The Canada Line P3 clearly does not work, but it does not mean all P3's are flawed.

I love how your "critical" assessment of biases is positioned within a false dichotomy. It is not only ironic that self proclaimed "centrists" like yourself place your views within this framework - it is outright hypocritical.

[Violator]

So one of the groups that Macqarie Group (an Aussie company)was talking to about helping to secure the financing was the Bank of Scotland...the same bank that the British Government had to bail out. So this company wanted to use British tax payer bailout money to design, build and operate a bridge, pay back the money with interest and toll the road to make it's money back and then a profit. What part of this sounds logical? The Liberal Government doesn't stop to think about the big picture. It is a P3 no matter what the circumstance is. And it is mostly just for spite...not sound economics.

You should read the report by Ron Parks and Rosanne Terhart.

A report slamming p3 on a cupe website

We'll that's not biased...........Yeah right

[nitronuts]

LOL

Who's funding it?

The province will likely provide the rest of the funding needed...at this point, this is Campbell's new baby.

[nitronuts]

So one of the groups that Macqarie Group (an Aussie company)was talking to about helping to secure the financing was the Bank of Scotland...the same bank that the British Government had to bail out. So this company wanted to use British tax payer bailout money to design, build and operate a bridge, pay back the money with interest and toll the road to make it's money back and then a profit. What part of this sounds logical? The Liberal Government doesn't stop to think about the big picture. It is a P3 no matter what the circumstance is. And it is mostly just for spite...not sound economics.

You should read the report by Ron Parks and Rosanne Terhart.

To reiterate what ron said as he put it quite eloquently:

You can complain all you want about it but rest assured it's firmly entrenced as one of the contract models now. Instead of simply giving bad examples (it's just as easy to come up with examples of purely run publicly sector contracts, take the waterworks tunneling on the north shore as an example) of P3s, I would suggest looking at the good examples as well.

Publicly funded projects are not always good.

Privately funded projects are not always bad.

You have to look at each project individually and weigh the merits of each.

There are good P3 projects out there, and of course there are bad ones too. But the bad ones don't mean they're all bad and do not work. Rail P3's ARE increasingly more common: in Asia, Australia, and Europe.

And your link btw...really??? loll. Sad.

[inane]

http://www.straight.com/article-271532/vancouver/marvin-shaffer-flawed-analysis-props-bc-publicprivate-partnerships

Many will have heard Premier Gordon Campbell and his cabinet colleagues talk in glowing terms about public-private partnerships (P3s) for major projects like hospitals, highways, bridges, and sewage treatment.

Traditionally, governments borrow money for things like hospitals and bridges. They use that money to pay the private sector to design and build the projects. Once built, the facility or infrastructure is wholly owned, operated, and maintained by government on behalf of the public.

In P3 projects, however, the government typically enters into multi-decade contracts with private corporations to design, build, finance, and operate facilities, whether that be hospitals, toll highways, or sewage treatment systems. Rather than financing and operating these facilities, the government effectively leases them from the private partner, paying for the right to use them over the life of the contracts.

How does government decide when to stay public and when to do a P3? That’s a good question. In August, after more than six years in the business of assessing and promoting P3s, Partnerships B.C. finally released the methodology it uses to decide whether to build something publicly in the traditional way or to use a P3. And sadly for B.C. taxpayers, who are locked into $10 billion worth of spending on P3 projects over the next 30 to 40 years, the methodology is fundamentally flawed.

In its methodology document, Partnerships B.C. explains how it calculates value for the “risk transfer” to the private partner and the benefits from long-term performance guarantees it achieves with P3s. Partnerships B.C. doesn’t explain why risks can’t be transferred under traditional fixed-price design-build contracts, and why long-term performance can’t be guaranteed with bonds or similar mechanisms as is commonly done in traditional (non-P3) contracts. That is problematic in itself.

However, the major and most obvious failing of Partnerships B.C.’s methodology is that it only focuses on the benefits of P3s and completely ignores the cost side of the equation. When private companies finance public projects, they pay higher interest rates on what they borrow and require a high rate of return on what they invest. The higher costs of private financing for P3s are built into the lease rates that taxpayers ultimately pay, and are much higher than the debt service costs that government would pay if it financed the projects itself. For large, expensive public infrastructure, that can add hundreds of millions of dollars to the total expenditures government incurs over the life of the project.

For inexplicable and certainly unjustifiable reasons, Partnerships B.C. completely ignores the higher financing costs of P3s in its assessment methodology. It pretends the financing costs are the same. In other words, its methodology looks at the potential benefits of P3s without considering the costs. And it compounds that problem by giving very little weight in its analysis to the future tax burdens the P3s impose.

No wonder all of Partnerships B.C.’s so-called “value for money” assessments find that P3s are preferred to the more traditionally procured, publicly financed approach. Its methodology, which provides estimates of benefits, and which assumes incorrectly there are no costs, guarantees the result.

All of this would be rather amusing if it were just a silly error on the part of an over-exuberant Partnerships B.C. But it isn’t just that. This is the methodology government is relying on to justify the many P3s it is entering into. And the fact of the matter is Partnerships B.C.’s assessment methodology provides no justification for selecting P3s over more traditionally procured publicly financed projects, and in fact, evidence suggests taxpayers will pay more in the long run.

In very simple terms Partnerships B.C.’s analysis is flawed and shortsighted, doing a disservice to future taxpayers who must pay the extra costs of the P3 for the full length of the contract. With $10 billion tied up in P3 projects, the questions raised by Partnerships B.C.’s methodology should raise the alarm about any real value for money for taxpayers.

[nitronuts]

^ The Georgia Straight? ha.

For the record, I lean more towards publicly funded projects but I do see the merit of P3's for some projects and they absolutely do work if done correctly, at least with rail projects and there are examples of that worldwide. But I have to say I've always believed that Partnerships BC is flawed...and Campbell seems to be more interested in P3's than the actual infrastructure being built. I recall the Canada Line's opening ceremony at the airport station, Campbell went on and on about how the P3 was a success and mentioned little about the actual rail line opening...it was Stockwell that saved the day and focused more on the infrastructural component of the project.

And of course, the Canada Line project was a terrible P3. Among things, a successful infrastructure P3 requires significant public oversight with both design and operations....we didn't see that for design at all, which is why we have the system that we have today, and the operations part of that won't be judged for a few more years.

[inane]

^ The Georgia Straight? ha.

For the record, I lean more towards publicly funded projects but I do see the merit of P3's for some projects and they absolutely do work if done correctly, at least with rail projects and there are examples of that worldwide. But I have to say I've always believed that Partnerships BC is flawed...and Campbell seems to be more interested in P3's than the actual infrastructure being built. I recall the Canada Line's opening ceremony at the airport station, Campbell went on and on about how the P3 was a success and mentioned little about the actual rail line opening...it was Stockwell that saved the day and focused more on the infrastructural component of the project.

And of course, the Canada Line project was a terrible P3. Among things, a successful infrastructure P3 requires significant public oversight with both design and operations....we didn't see that for design at all, which is why we have the system that we have today, and the operations part of that won't be judged for a few more years.

Why are you so hung up on the publication rather than the content of the article? So what if the Georgia Straight published it? Here's a little blurb about the author.

"Before talks could begin, both sides had to appoint negotiators, and ironically enough, both sides wanted the same person: Marvin Shaffer. Shaffer, an economist and policy analyst who had worked for the crown corporationsecretariat, was familiar with the major transportation issues facing the region.

However, it was the GVRD who secured Shaffer’s services. Marvin is quite a bright, creative guy,”

George Puil said. “He was the best choice we could’ve made, because most of the things that we got, I think Marvin was responsible for.”

That description is from Translink itself.

http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/TransLink%20History/TransLink%20History%20Nov%202008.ashx

[ronthecivil]

So one of the groups that Macqarie Group (an Aussie company)was talking to about helping to secure the financing was the Bank of Scotland...the same bank that the British Government had to bail out. So this company wanted to use British tax payer bailout money to design, build and operate a bridge, pay back the money with interest and toll the road to make it's money back and then a profit. What part of this sounds logical? The Liberal Government doesn't stop to think about the big picture. It is a P3 no matter what the circumstance is. And it is mostly just for spite...not sound economics.

You should read the report by Ron Parks and Rosanne Terhart.

Actually, as soon as the goverment starts being the funding partner it's not a P3 anymore, though it does remain a design-build, the merits of which once again would vary from project to project.

[ronthecivil]

The province will likely provide the rest of the funding needed...at this point, this is Campbell's new baby.

The heavily in debt budget slashing provincial goverment? That would be quite the news story to say the least.