"The fact that our Low Level Road impedes (Port Metro Vancouver's) ability to expand without consultation does not give PMV the right to mislead the public on the design outcome of this project."
Marianne Ketchen, North Shore News,
Nov. 23, 2011
DO the issues raised by letter-writer Marianne Ketchen revolve around the extent to which Port Metro Vancouver already possesses - or is allowed to assume - the statutory authority to impose its expansion onto the area it covets in the City of North Vancouver?
And if the project goes ahead, who will have control/ ownership of the route when completed?
Whether provided by PMV or the provincial government, truthful answers to those questions are essential if city council is to protect the economic and environmental wellbeing of residents whose homes are adjacent to the Low Level Road.
Because after placing the eerily similar progress of this project alongside the chronology of the RAV/ Canada Line and Roberts Bank projects, it is clear that decisions of council are critical to a successful resolution of community concerns.
Making the case: Ketchen was right to focus on what is akin to a truth-inadvertising issue.
The banner of the port's online forum at porttalk.ca/ low-level-road reads Proposed Low Level Road Project.
Yet the introduction states the project will be designed to "accomodate (sic) future planned rail expansion on the North Shore."
The port already knows what it has "planned" so you can be sure the dictates of the provincial and federal governments are an integral part of the scheme - just as expansion of Roberts Bank was a foregone conclusion when the Campbell-Clark government pulled land out of the ALR under guise of settling the Tsawwassen Treaty.
So let's call a spade a spade, not a teaspoon.
As Ketchen wrote, the name should be Port Metro Vancouver Rail Expansion Project; to pretend otherwise is obfuscation.
The next question to be answered - ideally, by an independent, preproject auditor general-type person - is whether or not expansion of the North Vancouver division of PMV should even be contemplated.
Is the decision an economically practical one - or politically motivated?
We hear from all levels of government about the need for Canada to trade with Asia, but that chatter began long before global economies toppled sideways.
Does the idea still hold water in the face of North America's trade deficits with China and the downward effect of the Chinese economy on commodity prices?
What is in our economic future following Japan's request for guaranteed fuel prices to aid its postearthquake recovery?
As North Vancouver sculptor and resident Michael Binkley asked, "What about the $50 million PMV cost estimate for the one-kilometre section of a new LLR below our neighbourhood?"
Not only is that high when compared to other provincial highway projects, we also remember that engineering budgets tend to escalate: the SNC-Lavalin/SERCO RAVline estimate was $1.35 billion after the company said its non-compliant cut-and-cover bid would save the project about $400 million and still climbed to $2.2 billion.
Stabilization of the slope above the Low Level Road is necessary; we've heard that since before PMV was called PMV. Why did the city wait for the impetus of port expansion, spirit trails and bike lanes before moving the project to the front burner?
Why did the city donate $1 million of our tax dollars toward PMV's predevelopment design costs - especially when the city lost $1.2 million and a hefty annual shortfall in tax revenue to a 2005 B.C. Assessment Tribunal decision on the Western Stevedoring appeal of its taxes. Did PMV hope to receive a go-ahead for the project in the absence of detailed or any drawings?
And just what power will the city have going forward? This is no idle question. Remember the track record of the Canada Line public consultation process where several methods of construction were presented, but only one option - a bored tunnel - was proposed for Cambie Village.
Businesses and residents relied on this information, and made business decisions based on assurances that disruption would be mitigated, and last only two to three months in any given block.
Also on the strength of that information, the City of Vancouver, at special public meetings on May 13-15, 2003, voted conditional approval of the project.
Too bad for everyone that, once SNC-Lavalin was quietly given the nod on its deviating
bid, confidentiality agreements were signed by all parties and the community was blind-sided by a cut-and-cover project known locally as Cambie Canyon.
The years of construction caused some building foundations to crack, and basements to flood. Many of the tenants, vulnerable small business owners, lost their life's work. At least one business owner came close to suicide from the stress of losing his downtown business.
Hindsight shows the so-called public consultations were nothing more than the lipservice cost of doing business the B.C. way.
The lesson to be learned is that the city must hold PMV's feet to the fire on promises it makes as this expansion project progresses - promises such as the insufficient one relayed by staff last Friday, that PMV has agreed to lower the new road by four metres.
This is not a NIMBY issue. The North Vancouver South Slope Community Association is not philosophically opposed to the project; members are bending over backwards to co-operate. I just hope their willingness to be reasonable is rewarded by PMV and by the City of North Vancouver.
At stake are citizens' rights to an ethical process and the autonomy of locally elected governments.
If the city doesn't grasp the reins with an iron hand, what first appeared to be an innocent, albeit expensive, proposal for a road improvement project may escalate into an earth-shaking expansion of the port authority into the back gardens of Low Level Road neighbours.
rimco@shaw.ca
