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Canada Line

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The Canada Line, formerly known as the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver Line ("RAV Line"), is a new rapid transit line of the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (TransLink) currently under construction. The line is being built and will be operated by SNC-Lavalin, for 35 years. The line will be the third in Greater Vancouver, Canada, though it will not use linear induction motor technology as the existing SkyTrain lines do; it is unclear whether it will be branded as a third SkyTrain line. The Canada Line will connect downtown Vancouver to the Vancouver International Airport and Richmond City Centre in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Governance of the project is through RAV Project Management (RAVCO), a subsidiary of TransLink. The line is expected to carry 100,000 passengers per day at launch and 142,000 passengers by 2021.[1]

Timeline

  • In 1995, BC Transit (a crown corporation responsible for public transit) expressed desire to create a special service of either bus rapid transit (BRT) or automated light rapid transit service connecting the cities of Richmond, Vancouver, and the Vancouver International Airport in one of the transit improvement plans.
    • Underground rights-of-way were reserved at the Concord Pacific development close to the Cambie bridge.
  • In 2003, ten companies or consortia submitted 'Expressions of Interest' in this project.
  • In December 2003, this was short listed down to three who were given a 'Request for Proposal'. These three consortia were:
  • On June 30, 2004, after twice voting to cancel the project, the TransLink Board approved the RAV line but maintained the right to cancel the project if none of the bids meet the approved budget of $1.35 billion.
  • On November 19, 2004, RAVCO recommended that the SNC-Lavalin/Serco (now known collectively as InTransitBC) proposal for a fully automated, grade-separated system be accepted. This 'Best and Final Offer' bid was $343 million over the approved budget. The project was, however, brought to within the funding allowance, through various cost trimming measures, including design changes, the contractor agreeing to lower their bid, and the province contributing another $65 million.
  • On December 1, 2004, the TransLink board gave final approval for the project.
  • On July 29 2005 the final contract to design, build and operate the RAV Line was signed between InTransitBC and Translink. Serco is no longer a partner to InTransitBC and 2 pension funds have been brought into the partnership.
  • In October 2005, the utilities relocation and roadwork was started.
  • On November 25, 2005, the design of the new trains was unveiled and Rotem was announced as the supplier of the trains.
  • The line is expected to be operational in November 2009, just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver.

Project funding and management

RAVCO was set up by the agencies funding the transit line to oversee project design, procurement, construction and implementation. The public contributions to the budget comes from the following sources:

The British Columbia government initially committed $300 million but when the project went over-budget, they contributed an extra $65 million, and TransLink committed an extra $100 million by selling some of its assets.

These sums are all in 2006 dollars, except for the Government of Canada's contribution which will be paid out when constructed, and is estimated to be equivalent of $419 million 1993 dollars.

In addition to the public funding, the line will be built as a private-public partnership where the private contractor, InTransitBC, will provide the project for a fixed price. InTransitBC will be responsible for the remaining costs to construct the project, including any increases in construction costs (other than changes to the scope of the project). Since the contract was signed, InTransitBC's $300 million contribution has escalated by $400 million due to increases in construction costs. The total private sector funding of the project is approx. $700 million.

The private sector will operate the line for 35-years in return for a share in the operating revenue of the line.

Approved changes in scope that have increased the cost of the project include the addition of a pedestrian and bike path to the North Arm bridge and the double tracking of the line near the future Capstan Station. A decision on the installation of fare gates is expected in fall 2006.

Route description

The Canada Line (red), part of the Greater Vancouver transit system in 2010.

The Vancouver section of the line will run underground from Waterfront Station, with a cut-and-cover tunnel under Granville Street between Hastings and Dunsmuir and a bored tunnel under Granville and Davie Street and False Creek to the 2nd Avenue station on Cambie Street, where it will run as a cut-and-cover tunnel as far as 64th Avenue with the two directions either side-by-side or stacked on separate decks.

Construction of the middle arm bridge.

From there, the line will be elevated, crossing the North Arm of the Fraser River via a new cable-stayed bridge. At the proposed Bridgeport Station, the line would split, with the main line heading south on an elevated track along Number 3 Road to Richmond City Centre. A branch line will cross the Middle Arm of the Fraser River, connecting Bridgeport Station to stations on Sea Island and terminating at Vancouver International Airport. Portions of the airport branch will be at-grade in order to accommodate a future elevated taxiway for aircraft over the line. In addition, segments of the Richmond and Airport branches are single tracked instead of double tracked to cut project costs and to appease Richmond City Council, which considered the overhead line an eyesore and had been fighting for an at-grade line.[citation needed]

There is a proposal to extend the Millennium Line SkyTrain west along Broadway to Cambie Street, allowing for a transfer to the Canada Line at Broadway-City Hall Station. As indicated in material presented by the City of Vancouver at public meetings in early 2006, this station is being designed with such a future extension in mind.

Travel times southbound from downtown Vancouver will be 25 minutes to Richmond Centre and 26 minutes to the airport terminus. Northbound, trains will leave Richmond City Centre and YVR every six minutes heading to Vancouver. The departures will be coordinated to allow for a train every three minutes on the main line in Vancouver.[2]

Stations

Template:Future building

Construction of the Vancouver City Centre Station.

Stations are proposed to be built in two stages: 16 stations will be built for the line's projected opening prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics, with up to four additional stations being added after the line opens. The proposed stations are listed below.

Each station along the Canada Line is planned to be slightly different in appearance, and designed to blend in with the surrounding neighbourhood. Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, for instance, may be built in brick to match Yaletown's heritage whereas Langara-49th Avenue Station will fit into a more traditional residential neighbourhood.

Recent concerns about the location of the Broadway-City Hall station have led to discussions about moving the station north 50 metres, placing it closer to Broadway. Such a change would cost approximately $3 million, which is to be shared equally among the City of Vancouver (which has approved the expenditure), Translink and InTransitBC.[citation needed]

Station platforms will be only 40 metres long, extendable to 50 metres long. The YVR terminus and the Richmond-Brighouse terminus will each be single-tracked, whereas the Waterfront Station terminus will be double-tracked to accommodate the shorter headways required for interlined service from the two branches. King Edward Station will be the only station with a stacked configuration and Broadway-City Hall Station will be the only station with a double height ceiling over the platforms. Vancouver City Centre Station will be linked to Pacific Centre Mall and Vancouver Centre Mall in addition to having street level access. There will be no direct connection from Vancouver City Centre Station to the Expo Line's Granville Station. All direct transfers to the Skytrain will be made at Waterfront Station.

All stations will be configured to allow for the future installation of fare gates if required.

Every station will have elevators and an escalator travelling up, but will not necessarily have an escalator going down (except for the airport stations, which will have escalators travelling in both directions). [1]

Vancouver section

File:DSCF1504.jpg
Construction taking place on the south shore of False Creek, at the site of Olympic Village Station. This is where the tunnel boring machine will begin its work.

Richmond section

File:Canada Line Lansdowne stn.jpg
A sign posted at the Lansdowne station showing design and layout
Canada Line construction in Richmond, near No. 3 Road at Capstan Way.

Trains outbound to Richmond's commercial centre will stop at:

  • Bridgeport (north of Bridgeport Road in Richmond; major transit exchange for suburban buses; link to Airport branch)
  • Aberdeen (No. 3 Road at Cambie Road)
  • Lansdowne (No. 3 Road at Lansdowne Road; 3-4 blocks away from the Richmond Olympic Oval speed skating venue)
  • Richmond-Brighouse (No. 3 Road at Cook Road, adjacent to the Richmond Centre shopping mall)

Airport branch

Trains outbound from Vancouver to Vancouver International Airport will split from the main line after Bridgeport Station, stopping at:

  • Templeton (likely to be located north of Grant McConachie Way, near Templeton Street)
  • Sea Island Centre (likely to be located on Grant McConachie Way, near the Air Canada service centre)
  • YVR-Airport (adjacent to the main terminal of Vancouver International Airport)

Post 2010

Vancouver

  • 33rd Avenue (Cambie Street at West 33rd Avenue, next to Queen Elizabeth Park)
  • 57th Avenue (Cambie Street at West 57th Avenue)

Richmond

YVR Airport

Technology

The Canada Line will not use the proprietary Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit linear induction technology, but rather another fully automated transit vehicle using more conventional motors than the linear induction motor used in trains on the Expo and Millennium lines. This was largely a consequence of the scope of the Request for Proposals process for the Public-Private Partnership, the terms of which refused to allow Bombardier to include efficiencies in combining operations or rolling stock orders for the new line with those for the existing Skytrain lines. This placed all bidders on a level playing field, albeit at the cost of not necessarily picking the most efficient choice for long term operation. The RFP also required that the system have an ultimate capacity of 15,000 pphpd (leaving the choice of technology and platform length to the proponent) and required a maximum travel time between YVR and downtown Vancouver of 24 minutes.[3]

Vehicles

File:BannerFront.jpg
Artist's conception of the RAV Line Vehicle in 2009.

The trains (ROTEM EMU) will be designed and built by Rotem Company, a division of Hyundai Motor Group.

In total twenty fully-automated articulated trains are on order. Capacity of the new trains is estimated at 334 people, with a top speed of 80 km/h. Married pairs of gangway connected cars will be 41 metres long and 3 metres wide, similar in dimensions to Ottawa's O-Train, but both longer and wider than the ART fleet used by the current SkyTrain lines, and will have electronic ‘Next Destination’ signs on each train.

Controversies

The plans for the new line have generated much controversy. Opponents have claimed that the approval process was undemocratic and dishonest. They say that the projected ridership figures were grossly inflated,[4] which will mean that taxpayers and transit passengers will have to cover the shortfall in revenue, that the official claim that the project had nothing to do with Vancouver's bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics was not credible.[5]

Costs

Opponents of the RAV line's public-private partnership believe it was politically motivated and that it will cost more money because of the private involvement. The private involvement has, however, allowed for the costs to be known and largely fixed up-front.

As the funding is likely to be provided by property taxes collected from throughout the Lower Mainland, this would mean that many communities that would be most hurt by the funding crunch (such as the North Shore, which is served primarily by buses and ageing SeaBuses which need to be replaced) could end up paying for a disproportionate share. (The western North Shore municipalities have the highest real estate prices in the Lower Mainland and therefore the highest property taxes.)

Although the contract is supposed to ensure that no cost over-runs are passed on to TransLink and thus the public, there is a concern that it may somehow cost the public more in the future. The primary risk to TransLink is that it is required to guarantee 90% of projected ridership and to make up the shortfall in revenue if this is not achieved. The other potential risk would be if TransLink were to cause delays in the project by not meeting their responsibilities; they might be required to pay the costs for these delays and to ensure that the project is completed in time.

Above-ground vs underground

It is acknowledged that construction of street-level light rail trams would have been significantly cheaper than the proposed system, which requires grade separation (tunnels or elevated lines), but the operation cost and the City of Vancouver made it clear it would oppose any grade-level transit along the Cambie Street corridor.

Arbutus Corridor

Given that Arbutus Street is currently zoned for transit use with space available for transit lines, running the line down the Arbutus corridor may have been more cost-effective than tunnelling under Cambie. The planners, however, countered that the Arbutus corridor does not have the major concentration of transit destinations and origins that exist along the Cambie Street corridor, such as Vancouver City Hall, Vancouver General Hospital, Oakridge Shopping Centre, and Langara College that are necessary to provide the ridership required for this project to be successful. Also the Arbutus corridor is longer than the Cambie corridor and would cause longer travel times, and contributions by the federal government and the airport authority were contingent on service times that such a system would not have been able to achieve.

The City of Vancouver plans to run a streetcar line down the Arbutus corridor and in February 2006, won a Supreme Court of Canada decision against the Canadian Pacific Railway upholding the City's right to rezone the lands for a transportation corridor (the CPR had wanted to develop the corridor with housing).[2]

Impact on expansion of other transit options

Some observers claim that the portion of the cost of the Canada Line that TransLink is covering will be at the expense of improving bus service in Greater Vancouver. It has been pointed out that construction of the Canada Line will do nothing to improve transit or alleviate congestion on the Broadway corridor, which services a majority of the more than 100,000 weekday trips to the University of British Columbia, the Lower Mainland's most frequent weekday destination after the downtown core. In addition, the Evergreen Line rapid transit project has been scaled back (from originally being a SkyTrain line to an LRT line) and delayed (until at least 2011, potentially longer).

Construction methods

Another controversy arose after the contract was awarded: the winning proposal included cut-and-cover tunnel along Cambie Street under the northbound roadway, rather than the bored tunnel that had been previously discussed in public consultations. This construction method was not widely publicized until the environmental review process. Business owners along Cambie Street state that digging up the street to build this tunnel is significantly affecting traffic and forcing many smaller businesses to close.

The contractor maintains cut-and-cover will be cheaper, with less construction uncertainty, and that the stations will now be much closer to the surface and therefore more accessible. InTransitBC's winning bid also allowed extension of the tunnel to 64th Avenue, well past the minimum requirement of 49th Avenue set out in the RFP. Placing the tunnel under the roadway also saved excavation of the treed median, as was proposed in the RAVxpress's proposal for a permanent open trench in the median for the guideway south of 49th Avenue. The original InTransitBC cut and cover proposal was to use precast tunnel segments, but this has since been changed to cast in place sections, since precast sections must be connected linearly from one end to the other, and with the tight time frames, the ability of cast in place construction to be built in a piecemeal fashion (i.e. if unforeseen delays were encountered along the route) provided more flexibility for the construction schedule.

Serco left the InTransitBC partnership with no public explanation as to why. InTransitBC has brought in additional "private" partners comprising public pension fund management companies to help finance InTransitBC's share of the project (now upwards of $700 million) following increases in construction costs. There are those who feel that since the main purpose these companies was to guarantee the loans and help finance the project, the public ownership of the public pension fund management companies exposes the public to additional risk, therefore reducing the main advantage of a Public-Private Partnership (that is that private companies assume the financial risk of cost over-runs). The pension funds involved are British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC), who manage the BC Public Service Pension funds, and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (Caisse), who manage the Quebec Public Service Pension funds.

Hiring practices

On September 21, 2006, Canada Line construction workers planned a strike over racial issues, claiming that foreign workers were being hired at a fraction of the pay of Canadians working on the line.[6]

Name of the line

Initially called the "RAV Line", the line is now officially known as the "Canada Line".

Other names were also considered:

  • Olympic Line: Although not officially tied to the 2010 Winter Olympics, hosting the Olympics was a part of the rationale for building the line.
  • RAV Line: The Richmond-Airport-Vancouver line.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ http://canadaline.ca/allFacts.asp
  2. ^ http://canadaline.ca/allFacts.asp
  3. ^ Best and Final Offer Stage Report & Recommendations (PDF)
  4. ^ Come clean on RAV line, MacPhail tells CampbellLarry Campbell's RAV Reward
  5. ^ Privatization: Cabinet leak proves Liberals will do anything for a P3
  6. ^ "Labour strife plagues Canada Line construction". CKNW News Talk 980. Retrieved 2006-10-19.
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