The "pocket tracks" or sidings along the RAV alignment have been omitted, and are no longer in the spec or design documents except at the end termini plus Bridgeport. So if there is a train failure or suicide at a station the complete line has to come to a halt untill the problem is rectified. Crossovers are also expensive to build, both in the tunnels and overhead, but not at at-grade or on-street as is so common with modern lRT and why LRT is so versitile. There was none spec'd in the initial engineering designs, albeit the original stacked tunnel configuration made crossovers impossible under most of Vancouver.

This is now tied into the second bit of news. No operator can have enough confidence in the reliability of either the guideway (track and controls) or the rolling stock itself (a cheap and untested Korean car), to do without the fail-safe of either sidings or crossovers.

That said, it has long been known (AND NEVER PRINTED BY THE MEDIA) that no operator is attached to the project. Serco pulled out over 18 months ago, and the only mention of the "O" side of this DBFO ever since is that SNC itself will operate the line.

It is of course patently ridiculous for an engineering management company to run a municipal subway line.

Now, we have also always known that ridership risk was 90% to Translink (read: the taxpayer), so this is not necessarily new. The Sun also refuses to print this, or contradict RAVCo's "fixed budget" mantra.

At least the Tyee is printing some of the RAV nonsense, but don'r expect to see or hear anything negative about RAV in the Sun or CORUS Radio!

Grumpy:

Interesting stuff.

From past TYEE articles it seems you follow this Transit issue in general, and TRANSLINK specifically with much due diligence.

Like Rafe used to say...In a Democracy the people have the final say (if they don't it's not a democracy)...

....and given ALL the information the people ultimately make the BEST choice (we the people are not given all the facts....or they continually change).

This RAV project is a prime example...where is the Legal profession in rallying the public to stop this ever increasing bypass of due - process ? Surely there must be something within the Local Gov't Act/Community Charter re: Referendums and Voter approval that could be applied to challenge and perhaps prevent much of this chicanery.

Enough is enough !

Maestro, thanks for the compliment. Thr ral problem here is that we had a metro or SkyTrain forced upon us instead of the originally planned for LRT (I have the 1978 light rail plans!).

Not going into the skyTrain debacle any further, but what SkyTrain has left us is a legacy of inept public transit planning. TransLink was just more of the same and it is my contention that Puil and the NDP conspired to create TransLink to just build more SkyTrain with the promice of building expensive subways for only Vancouver, being subsidised by regional, provincial and federal taxpayers.

Grossly inept planners oversaw transit planning, with their ineptitude hidden by the vast expence of metro construction.

Where LRT is being built in France for $11 million/km. we build it (Evergreen line) for $95 million/km.! No one builds with SkyTrain so there isn't anything to compare it with. Only when RAV was put to a PPP tender was the term metro used. LRT, the most built 'rail' public transport system in the world was treated as a poorman's SkyTrain, instead of a different mode.

RAV was just more of this hocus-pocus planning and when the first costs for subway construction were placed at $1.2 billion, I screamed nonsense. But the metro scam continued. Now RAV is at least $2.3 billion and climbing and the only way to cut costs is to scale down the construction costs like making stations smaller (they will only accomodate a 2 car train!); elimination of sidings and crossovers; elimination of compensation for businesses disturbed during construction; and paying off-shore workers $5 an hour to build the subway.

RAV is a scam and the chief people orchestrating this Bre-X style 'bait and switch' ponsie scheme is premier Campbell; Kevin Falcon; Ken Dobell; Sam Sullivan; the previous mayor of Vancouver Campbell (who by coincidence got a senate seat); Malcolm Brodie (whose municipality got the Olympic skating Oval, complete with fam trips to Europe); the Asper press and CORUS radio!

The public have been fed tripe with the SkyTrain/RAV lobby and in the end the poor taxpayer will be held accountable, paying off government friends and businesses for a grossly overpriced subway that will do little in aleviating congestion in the region!

What is needed is a criminal investigation on RAV!

Grumpy
Do you have any hard information tying the politicians to any of the companies involved in the construction, management and planning of the RAV line?

Where would a criminal investigation start?

Hell yes!

First let's start with the 1993 rapid transit plans for BC Transit, Thses have become the bible for our transit planning, yet are ful of complete misinformation about lrt, Then continue with the Millenium line and all the anti LRT nonsnese by Clark, Puil, et el. A repeated lie is tantamount to fraud.
Then I would go after Jane Bird, Ken Dobell (he's shredded everthing) and Translink on their rapid transit planning., Then the PPP bidding process.

If doRavRight is successful in their lawsuit against TransLink, just watchout for a criminal investigation!

Give you a hint. Both LRT and SkyTrain/RAV are railways, why then is LRT slower - it isn't, it is designed to be slower by planners! So The LRT option on Arbutus or Cambie St. could have the same commercial speed as the subway, if designed so.

RAV and TransLink planner’s have deliberately mislead the TransLink Board about modern LRT
and this quote from TransLink’s 2003 Community Consultation Guide, sums up their foul deception. “However, underground and elevated systems are cheaper to operate, faster, safer,
and more reliable than street level systems, because they do not cross road intersections.” This Be-X scale of devious deception, is scandalous.

Calgary’s at grade light rail system carries more passengers annually than SkyTrain (about 225,000 passengers a day!), yet its annual operating costs are 40% less! Let us not forget SkyTrain’s annual subsidy of over
$200 million! SkyTrain’s annual death rate is about double of that of the C-Train! SkyTrain is faster than most LRT systems because it has fewer stations; fewer stations equals fewer passengers! Karshrue’s award winning LRT travels on the mainline railways at mainline speeds!
LRT systems have proven to be more reliable than automated (driverlesss) transit systems! Properly built, road intersections do not cause, gridlock, or disrupt traffic as claimed by TransLink and its anti-LRT planners, rather on-street LRT enhances traffic flow.

26 years of deliberate information by transit planners abetted by propaganda by the Asper Press and CORUS have given SkyTrain a free ride. Now the truth is slowly being told!

There's no doubt about the fact that the whole process is a cock-up. But, is it possible to point to political contributions from donor X to politician or party A that predate specific nonsensical decisions by politician or party A with respect to donor X?

I've been trying to get up to date records of political donations in this province and do some cross-referencing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If the media won't do it, people are going to have to start looking for themselves. Yes? I think maybe this province has been run like a pocket empire for long enough.

Grumpy:

We all make this common mistake..

With respect to the " Powers That Be "..We often imply intelligence or give them credit for intelligence in these quasi-Machiavellian project schemes. In my view the exact opposite is true and should be instead diagnosed as Basic Ignorance 101, and thus the ignorant "powers- that -be" play off the General Public Apathy 101.

Unfortunately, perhaps the powers -that- be and the General Public deserve each other if we collectively allow this increasingly all-to- frequent "lack of accountability" crap.

It appears that EXPO 86 with its Transportation theme seeded this SkyTrain Bombardier Boondoggle.."Made In (Eastern)Canada"..whoopeee!!... hence the first Skytrain phase. I'd hazard a guess that the original first SkyTrain phase already showed bad fiscal numbers and did not meet projections.

SO..what did the " powers -that- be " DO ???

They rarely if ever admit failure... nor look perhaps going back to the drawing board and start over. INSTEAD, THEY BUILD MORE AND EXPAND THE SYSTEM. That is often formulaic in Gov't...and then Gov't establishes another of many "Big Lies". This simply delays judgement day, to "cut and cover" THEIR asses, when perhaps a "drilled and bored" enema is just what the doctor says the patient needs...more practical if not just desperately needed.

All BC Gov'ts of different partisan stripes over the last 20 years have bought into this SkyTrain crap. Most recently, the waffling voting by Local Gov't members ie NO..NO..then YES !!! etc to approve the current phases of SkyTrain are embarrasing to view from a a grassroots perspective and truly bears investigation...

Grumpy:

Re: Larry Campbell

Too bad newly -minted Senator Larry Campbell had to pimp it(RAV etc.) as well, but " coincidentally " has a nice new civil service job till 75 and the ability to get out of town when the gettin's good.

I was initially surprised when he received the Senate appointment till the scuttlebutt flew as to the likely "stick and carrot" reason W-H-Y he switched careers(......and they claim the U.S political system is corrupt ! ).

Bangkok does - but labour in Thailand is even cheaper than Costa Rica. Nice system, though, without the cruddy plastic seats of the MarkI cars here, has air conditioning, and more head and wide-ass room, too, which is kinda strange when you consider your average Thai is even smaller than your average Richmondite.

But the Thai government's ethic on it was to build a system that would get people out of their Lexuses and Beemers; it's not targeted at the riders in the human sardine cans that are that city's grindingly slow bus system. It's meant to encourage middle and upper class riders, which is what our system should be doing. But our Skytrain is at times more crowded and more uncomfortable (especially the MarkI cars) than any Bangkok bus I've been on....and it actually goes useful places.

SLCP-SELI should be heavily punished. Bad enough they bring in foreign workers but then they have to lie to and cheat them too. Typical anti-labour crap.

You are wrong Skookum, Bangkok has Skytrain, but it is a Siemans metro system that is no relation to our SkyTrain! It seems anyone who operates an elevated metro call is SkyTrain or Air train! New York's money losing SkyTrain is locally called Air Train. It is Kula Lumpor that operates the Bombardier ART (SkyTrain system), well as elevated LRT (metro) and a monorail. Currently both The PUTRA (SkyTrain) and STAR (LRT) are being expanded. Interesting to note that the STAR outfit was not allowed to bid for PUTRA.

Asian cities, which suffer monsoon rains tend to build their 'rail' transit elevated because the water levels could rise as much a metre over the roads. Manilla has the same problem and their LRT system (which is defacto a metro) is elevated.

It is my belief that RAV, like the Gateway, is a process to funnel taxpayers money to corporate political friends by building massive mega projects which cost 3 or 4 time more than they should. It's all legal.

LRT on Arbutus to Richmond and the airport $800 million - RAV subway $2.3+ billion, yet both systems would carry about the same amount of people, with LRT and it's much cheaper construction costs, more able to be affordably expanded!

Just a note: Lavalin went bankrupt when they tried to build SkyTrain in Bangkok (they bought it from the UTDC), renmed it ALM (Automated Light Metro) and Bombardier Inc. bought the SkyTrain division from the reciever. Bombardier went to great leangths to design a new (metro size) car and markets the system as ART or Advanced/Automated Rapid Transit.

I seem to recall the FEDERAL LIBERALS dangling a carrot of approx. $ 300 MILLION in funding towards RAV ( subject to Local Gov't approval of the project ) which is , of course, a small portion of the overall $ BILLIONS cost.

It appears our Local Officials had some sort of bizarre logic that they could not dare turn down $300 million in Federally repatriated tax dollars...that would be b-a-d .. at least politically...even if they(We?) are now obligated to pick up the balance ie approx $2 Billion.

The FEDS get Eastern brownie points while we in the WEST are concurrently mortgaging our future re: this boondoggle project.

This sesm to be how their brains are programmed, much like funding for the Olpympic venues..whereby they recieve other repatriated tax dollars ie funding from external Gov't sources of approx. 1/3 of overall (capital) costs and , again, like RAV etc, obligate their own constituents to pay the far greater balance with NEW UNreptriated tax dollars.

Nice scam.

If it was a bad deal from the start,it simply opens the door for more corrupt UNdemocratic processes and other bad agendas. One wonders if Eastern Canada did NOT try to re-invent Public Transit sytems that were already in existence and built elsewhere, then maybe we would actually have , perhaps an LRT, or most ceetainly obtain, if not design, a " tried ,tested and true "
Rapid Transit system that worked efficently, was cost effective, and more importantly far more popular with the General Public.

Uh, Siemens or whomever may have finished the job; I've been on the Bangkok Skytrain and it has the same guideway/track design, and the cars were similar, though more nicely appointed; and at the time I was there (late '90s) I'm pretty sure that there was a pitch, I guess by SNC Lavalin, that it was the same system as Vancouver. But with nicer cars. And my cousin who lives there, who's from Vancouver and, though Norwegian-Irish, speaks and reads Thai, had commented on the Skytrain connection. I don't know the corporate finagling that went on around it; but at least the inception/conception of the project was Skytrain-related; that was part of its pitch in the Thai press, and part of whatever political controversy went with it.

One truism about it, whoever designed and/or built it: its difference to Bangkok traffic is noticeable; I was there before it was opened, and after. Maybe it's just because I didn't have to cab or bus or moto-taxi around like I did on my first few visits and could get to Sukhumvit from Silom without slogging through clogged traffic, but the word is (as cuz told me) there was a noticeable different in traffic before and after. Partly because rich Thais aren't as stuck up as rich Canadians; and partly because it isn't priced to encourage ridership by the poor...(unlike Mexico City's system, which is dirt-cheap).

And isn't "Skytrain" a trademarked brand-name?

All I remember about its creation (as a name) is that it was the result of one of those schlocky public contests held here that helped us get such powerfully poetic names as "Seabus" and "Skydome" and "Science World" and "BC Place" and other yuckety-yuck prizewinners.

This question is for Grumpy - do you happen to know if the tunneling portion or RAV is so far behind schedule that the company WANTS to walk away from the job? It might be convenient for them if they could blame it all on the unions and bail out.

The Bangkok SkyTrain is a regular (squirrel cage) motor affair, unlike the Linear Induction Motors of our SkyTrain. Both atre elevated metros and considering the population of Bangkok (8 million?) a metro is the right way to go. Ridership on Bangkoks metro has yet to match expectations, but the line is being extended to find the ridership.

No, SkyTrain is not a trademarked name. Our SkyTrain's true trademaked name is ALRT for the Expo Line and ART for the Millennium Line. In Toronto and Detroit, SkyTrain true name is ICTS! Many name changes for the proprietary metro.

The metro in Bangkok is expensive because iy is a Design, Build and Operate or DB&O system by Siemens and the high prices (by Thai standards) reflects the true cost of the metro. I believe that Siemens is just now breaking even on the metro.

The true ticket price for SkyTrain/RAV would be about $10 to $15 dollars per ride.

Newguy. what you say could be very well true. As the province is funding the metro (a P-3 RAV is no more) the contractors could walk at any time. Sad fact is, if they do, because of the tangled web of intrigue that RAV has become, they could go to court and probably win damages!

SNC/Lavalin can walk away anytime without financial penalty. Certianly their former partner in the P-3, SERCo. did!

Grumpy: the equivalent in baht, if you were earning baht/Thai wages that is, would be double or triple that; although in real-dollar terms it's about double ours I'd guess (I don't have a comparison on cost-of-living/wages for Thailand vs Canada); the idea is that it's to be cheap for rich people, but deliberately expensive for the poor (to keep them mostly off it).

Greater Bangkok may be 8 million; officially, at least in the late '90s, it was five million; but when you count cities in its exurban zone (names escape me at the moment, but Patthaya would be included to the southeast, I think it's Thonburi or Donburi to the southwest) it might be eight million.

Not sure of its extent now; when I was there it only ran from the bridge where Sathorn hits the river, at the south end of the Farang Quarter, up via the Windmill and Silom Road and beyond the WTC/Watergate area to Chatuchak market, and there was another line that ran long Sukhumvit quite a ways, starting somewhere at the Siam Centre. Not really much considering the incredible sprawl and density of the place.

I only remember those two lines; there may have been three, but if so I wasn't on them. The idea at the time seemed to be to tie the various central business districts (plural) together; I can't imagine they'd ever extend the line north to the airport or down to Donburi or Patthaya because of the distance/expense involved. And given the limited size of the Thai moneyed classes, I'd guess that they'd have to downgrade the prices to attract more riders from the poor.

What's Seoul's system? I seem to remember it as ordinary track, and the cars were something like TO's.

I meant to add about the BKK system is that part of its high costs had to do with the caissons necessary to sink into the endless bog/wet sand that lies beneath the city; they obviously can't tunnel there, if you know the history of the city. There's only a few canals left on the east side of the Chao Praya, but it wasn't too long ago that most of the city was canals. Given a few more decades of global warming, however, it may be that the Skytrain tracks will be at the new waterline....

Another place to look for criminal malfeasance is at the financing of the RAV line. The public sector unions in BC somehow got mixed up in this when the other 3 private partners bailed, and the BC Munical Pension Commission (Pensions BC) was left holding a double-sized bag of unsecured notes for $60-80 million of construction costs. Since when does a pensions fund doing its due diligence invest in unsecured construction projects that are virtually certain to lose money? In the 2006 AGM, this was pointed out.

However, despite a lot of scurrying about by the trustees to do their due diligence after the fact, no new facts ave come out. But the Pension fund has not divested itself of this loss! Could it be because there is a secret agreement by the BC government (see Dobell again!) to indemnify the pension fund against any loss, an agreement that goes against the spirit and law of investment by pension funds. Yet becuase we don't know what the form of the agrement is, we can't find out if there is one through FOI.

Such a joke. You BC taxpayers are going to bail out MY pension fund when RAV loses money. Happy? Believe it or not, I'm not either.

zalm
Have you got more information on this?
I'd be interested.

Skookum, there was a very interesting article in Modern Tramway and urban Transit a few years back. See:
lrta.org

Ah, the Canadian way! Idiotic megaprojects - our answer to the American's military-indusrial complex scam.

I had a look at that site; where would I look for the article you're talking about? Might help to know its subject so I can search the site for it...

I the article was 5 years ago, sorry, but it certainly shows that Bangkok's SkyTrain is a Seimens affair and not a Bombardier job.

http://www.lrta.org/world/worldp-t.html#Thailand

Just says a 1435-gauge Metro, opened in 1999, doesn't say who made it. Is there somewhere else I should look?

If the BC Government didn't trademark "Skytrain" after spending so much money on being the pilot system for this crappy, but oh-so-expensive technology, and also actually holding a name contest over it, that's their fault; I'd never have imagined anywhere else would think a name like that was worthwhile unless they were forced to buy it with the technology.

But, again, AFAIK when BKK's system got started it was modelled on Vancouver's; I'm pretty sure the commercial officer at the Embassy told me that, as well as my cousin.

I believe the article was about foreign workers getting screwed over by a Canadian firm.
SNC Lavalin is also the managing contractor on the Kelowna Floating Bridge.
SNC's non-union subcontractors on that project have been told "if your company gets organized by a union, you and your company are fired".
foreign workeers are not the only ones being screwed by SNC Lavalin.

Compared to the fiasco that is the highway and the automobile industry, SkyTrain and the Canada Line are small potatoes. While the rail systems here may be more expensive than some elsewhere, building highways and forcing people to buy and operate cars is really expensive. We are spending over $10 billion per year on transportation that is not only very bad for the environment but is also bad for people's health. Just look at the soaring obsity rates in Canada caused by lack of physical activity. Driving everywhere makes people lazy and fat.

The Port Mann Bridge Twinning and Highway 1 expansion will be a P3 that will likely cost much more than the province's $1.5 billion estimate. The capacity is very limited. The four new lanes of traffic will only move a maximum of around 8,000 people per hour. Compare that with the maximum of 15,000 per hour of the Canada Line and the 25,000 per hour of the SkyTrain. All of a sudden, even expensive rail looks very cheap.

The Golden Ears Bridge is $200 million over budget (the orginal budget was $600 million). They want to use foreign workers as well. Why not pick on that Grumps.

rac, SkyTrain has led us directly to Gateway. Build rail too expensive, then there isn't the density to support it. That theme is repeated over and over by the minister of Transportation.

Yeah. But it's not exactly Skytrain that led us to Gateway. It's the zoning priorities laid out in suburban municipalies that created automotive-culture densities and, allegedly, make rail or other non-automotive transit prohibitive. This applies on the metropolitan scale as well as on the local neighbourhood level. Skytrain is hardly to blame for this; what is to blame is the control of municipal councils by the collusion between automotive dealerships and their allies in the real estate industry; this was laid out very clear to me, and very pointedly, by the late Belle Morse, one-time mayor of Maple Ridge.

Sorry GWest - too busy to reply quickly,

BCIMC invested $40 million in RAV, along with $40 million from Quebec’s Caisse pension fund and $40 million from a third party I can’t remember now. Two other private partners were also involved to the total of $600 million for all four parties.

First MacQuarrie dropped out, then the last pension fund, then the other investment bank. Then the Caisse took a good look at what it had bought, and dropped out as well. At this point, without fanfare, it was found in a disclosure statement gained by FOI requests that BCIMC had taken over Caisse’s portion. No word on who took over the missing $480 million from the two private partners.

Here’s the problem:
BCIMC invested in InTransit BC, a private corporation with no assets except a 35-year contract to build and manage the RAV line. Quite the flyer, wouldn’t you say?

Costs of the RAV line were up to $2.2 billion at the time, and perhaps even higher now. No competitive bidding didn’t help (all the contractors dropped out except one - SNC Lavalin). Funds assembled for construction totalled only $1.6 billion. Payments to InTransit BC for the operating line total $98 million a year, sufficient only to service operating costs and debt of $1.6 billion at 6% simple interest.

No LRT line has ever met its targets for ridership or cost recovery since the original Skytrain in 1984. Translink’s own figures are the source for this. No riders, no income, no profit. All figures I used were from RAVCO Information Bulletin No 9 (August 2005) and from Translink Strategic Transportation Plan April 2000 and subsequent annual reports.

Part II to follow

So what happens when SNC-Lavalin defaults on construction due to costs? InTransitBC’s contract is worthless unless the line is completed. Therefore the pension fund investment is toast. Is there an asset that can be sold to recover funds? Possibly, if the government steps in and finishes the line with taxpayer dollars. But wait! BCIMC is an unsecured creditor - behind the governments and the private lenders. Remember, BCIMC made this deal while the private lenders were still “in”, knowing already that costs were through the roof. There is no possibility that BCIMC would ever get anything for its investment - not one red cent. That’s probably why Caisse and the other pension fund got out.

This is clear example of either failure to do “due diligence”, or the existence of a secret contract to indemnify the pension fund against any loss. Remember, this pension fund has just reduced pension benefits to its own members for dental, health and extended because it is running out of money. Why would it throw away $60 million on this fools errand, when they could buy an office building and rent it out for a return of 6% for time immemorial?

So someone else filed an FOI to prove the existence of a secret contract, while I filed a motion to divest with the trustees through the Pensions Advisory Committee of which I am a delegate. The FOI went nowhere ( I can’t remember the story I heard, but it sounded a stonewall job) while the motion I put forward was narrowly defeated (I’m still figuring out the politics of that one), and the trustees absented themselves from the discussion so they wouldn’t have to take official notice at that particular meeting, and thus be held accountable. However, with the minutes read into the next meeting, official notice was taken, and that’s when the stories started about frequent visits to Victoria and meetings etc. However, nobody’s talking, at least on record.

Bailing out RAV is contrary to the BCIMC's investment and operating principles, failure to report is an offense that auditors would report, and existence of an agreement to scretly indemnify the pension fund for losses at taxpayer expense without debate is morally bankrupt, and, depending on how the contract was written, possibly criminal as well.

If BCIMC demanded guarantees, such guarantees would be illegal. If they didn't, they're in violation of their own investment principles, and if they didn't report this investment or this violation accurately, they're criminally responsible for failure to report under GAAP. Take your pick.

Got it, and thank you very much zalm.

I'd really appreciate it if you'd send me an email sometime - I'm involved in an interesting little enterprise I'd like to have a chance to bend your ear about.

I went public with the pension plan scam over one and half years ago and the media (Asper/Gobal and CORUS) refused to air it. Rafe mair did air it and his contract was quickly cancelled.

Now a quick primer on SkyTrain. SkyTrain is a metro and a metro is supposed to cater to large traffic loads (in excess of 15,000 persons per hour per direction), thus justifying its expense. SkyTrain has never achieved this, thus the move to massively densify around the SkyTrain Line. Even so, ridership has only climbed with population. TransLink has treated SkyTrain as an 'express' bus route and tries to funnel as many passengers on to it to improve ridership figures (Did you know that the Main St. bus no longers travels into downtown Vancouver, but terminates near the Main St. Science World station, forcing passengers onto SkyTrain to complete their journey into Vancouver. After this little stunt, TransLink claimed a 6% increase in ridership!)

If one doesn't like buses, one will not take a bus to SkyTrain, that's why public transit ridership in the GVRD has stagnated at about 11%.

LRT on the other hand is so designed to penetrate into residential areas to attract it's own riderhip, but TransLink still plans LRT as a metro to be fed with buses! At about $11 million to $20 million a kilometre to build, LRT's construction costs are comparable to new road construction, thus you cna build up to 10 times more LRT per route km. than with a metro like SkyTrain. No density problems with LRT!

Now look at RAV, more of the same only on a larger scale. Watch out for massive developement along its route to try to force higher ridership on the metro. But there is a catch. If the people who move into the new highrises do not commute North/South but East/West, RAV will be useless for them.

Also for people living in Richmond and South Delta & Surrey, RAV will bring an unwelcomed transfer from bus to RAV. For many, the increased journey times enforced by the transfer (a minimum of 20 minutes) will force more people onto cars! For Richmond, if I get into my car to go to RAV, why not just complete my journey to Vancouver? For many, this will be a no brainer, hense the push for punitive tolling on our roads to compell us to use a poorly designed transit system!

As for SNC/Lavalin, they can walk at any time with no penalty! They have no risk with RAV as they are risking BC pension plan money!

Thanks Grumpy - noted. I wasn't around here (Tyee) 18 months ago, not trying to ignore you by any means.

Of course, as usual, the maze-ridden skullduggery ultimately ends up as "who is the ultimate fiscal guarantor / indemnifier.

This kind of blank-cheque Gov't( = taxpayer) has infinite fiscal resources crap is reaching meltdown point.

With all due respect to the pension funds used as guarantors...I'd seriously question your groups leadership or lack there-of, and perhaps taxpayer revolt is not out of the question, and the so-called "secured pension funds" either way may NOT be so secure after all.

The ad nauseum fall- back position of the " Taxpayer WILL pay " may ACTUALLY meet " Taxpayer WON'T Pay " , perhaps keep that in mind prior to accepting the gold watch and golden handshake.

Someone is asleep at the switch...and the switch and bait...and a taxpayer revolt may be the exclamation point at the very end of any line .

By the way, wouldn't substandard pay for any worker in Canada be a subject of interest for the federal Ministry of Labour? Or whatever they call it. Not that the Tories care, but there might be some mandate to that ministry to prevent such abusive labour practices, i.e. paying non-citizens less than citizens as well as the anti-union threats to shut down the operation: take this pay or shove it. Or are such labour protocols exempted from the purview of the federal government by the division of powers? Surely protecting civil rights must be in there somewhere, for some federal minister.

Tory or not.

Especially on a federally-funded project. Has this come up in Parliament yet? Oh no, wait, they're talking about Quebec again. And again and again. And meanwhile all kinds of stuff like this goes on, especially here on the farther side of the mountains where it's out of sight, out of mind, even for (most of) our own MPs.