THE 70-year-old North Vancouver bus depot will be closing its doors for good in three years' time.
TransLink announced the decision May 17, saying operations for the North Vancouver bus system will move to TransLink's Burnaby transit centre in 2015. The move is expected to save TransLink $4 million in capital upgrade costs and $16 million in operating costs over the next decade.
The move will take the depot out of a residential area of the city at East Third Street and St. Davids Avenue, where it has frequently been at odds with its neighbours. It also means almost 250 jobs currently based at the North Vancouver Transit Centre will move to Burnaby - or to a new transit centre scheduled to open in Richmond in 2015.
Once the centre moves to Burnaby, the fleet of 85 buses currently serving North Vancouver will be brought over the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing to begin their routes each day.
News of the announcement met with mixed reaction.
"It's a good news/bad news story," said City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto.
Mussatto said he was glad the depot would be moving from its location, where conflicts with neighbours about buses driving down the middle of the street and loudly braking had come before council as recently as this month.
"It's a single-family neighbourhood. It's not appropriate to have a bus depot in that neighbourhood," said Mussatto.
But Mussatto said he would rather a new home for the transit centre had been found on the North Shore.
That has remained an elusive goal for TransLink for much of the past decade.
In 2005, TransLink reached a tentative deal to buy 7.5 acres of former B.C. Rail lands on West First Street for $18 million to house a new bus depot. That deal was soon scuttled, however, when the District of North Vancouver refused to approve the plan after strong opposition from Norgate residents citing concerns about pollution and noise.
Since that time, TransLink hasn't been able to find another site to meet its needs in North Vancouver.
There had been discussions about combining the West Vancouver Transit Centre on Lloyd Avenue with the North Vancouver depot.
But there would only be room for 80 additional buses at that site, said Drew Snider, spokesman for TransLink. That wasn't enough to house either the existing fleet or the 250 buses that TransLink anticipates will be needed to serve the North Shore by 2028.
Snider said the age of the buildings and equipment at the old transit centre makes it more economical to move the buses to the newer Burnaby centre than to upgrade the North Vancouver facility.
Engineering studies indicate the old bus depot would probably have to close by 2022, said Snider.
"We're at the point where we have to move out of there," he said.
Snider said the only factor likely to change that decision would be finding another site for the centre on the North Shore.
Mussatto said given TransLink's current financial woes, that seems unlikely. "They don't have $20 million or $30 million to do that," he said.
Not everyone was happy with the announcement. Don McLeod, president of the Canadian Auto Workers local 111, representing the bus drivers, said his members would still like to see a transit centre on the North Shore.
McLeod said when buses have to be brought over the Second Narrows Bridge, there's potential for service to be interrupted if there's an accident that shuts the bridge to traffic.
Snider said 25 per cent of the North Shore fleet already comes from Burnaby and most of the buses are brought over by 5: 30 a.m. - when traffic is minimal.
But McLeod said some buses start on the routes at least two hours later than that, and there's no guarantee something won't happen.
"We believe the residents of the North Shore are entitled to have their own bus service," he said.
