Vancouver International Airport grows
Construction begins on 20-year, $9.1-billion expansion plan to meet passenger demand
Vancouver International Airport is starting construction on the next phase of a now-revised, 20-year expansion plan anticipating faster passenger growth that now comes with a $9.1-billion price tag, compared with $5.6 billion in 2017.
And speeding up construction will cause the airport authority to consider increasing airport-improvement fees, which YVR officials now boast are the lowest in Canada.
“I would hate to give a year figure (for when),” said YVR CEO Craig Richmond.
“What if things change? (However,) sometime in the next while, we will have to look at it and be increasing it.”
The fee, which was first imposed on passengers in 1993 to pay for capital improvements, sits at $5 for passengers flying in B.C. and $20 for those flying longer distances and, in 2017, YVR collected $159.3 million from those fees.
Richmond said record passenger growth over the past few years (YVR broke through the 24-million-passenger level in 2017, a growth of 8.4 per cent) caused the authority to pull $2-billion worth of projects into its 20-year plan that it didn’t expect it would need until after 2037. Forecasts for cost escalation and inflation over 20 years adds another $1.5 billion to the price tag, bringing it to $9.1 billion.
Richmond, along with Premier John Horgan and other representatives, broke ground Thursday to start construction on the most-immediate, $500-million phase of its expansion plan.
That includes a four-gate addition to its international flight area, a geothermal heating system and a new parkade.
However, Richmond said YVR has now pulled expansions of its domestic and further additions to its international flight areas, which are referred to as piers, into its 20-year plan, which now includes 75 separate projects.
The caveat, Richmond said, is that the revised expansion plan depends on YVR hitting its new growth projections.
After hitting 24 million passengers in 2017, which brings it close to its previous goal of attracting 25 million by 2020, YVR now expects to see 32-million passengers per year by 2022. And the further gate expansions are anticipated to happen later in the 20-year plan. Additions to the domestic-flights’ B Pier are expected for 2033 and new international gates by 2035. “Although we’ve been on a roll for about the last nine years, things can always happen,” Richmond said.
He added that world events could crop up to scale back international air travel, like the SARS virus epidemic of 2002-03 and 9-11 did in the early 2000s, so YVR will keep its capital plans staged.
“If that did happen, we would stop,” Richmond said.
One item not in the roster of projects is the addition of a new runway, though Richmond said YVR will continue studying the idea and has taken steps to secure air rights over South Richmond for that eventuality. Response to YVR’s continuing expansion on Sea Island remains mixed in the neighbouring municipality of Richmond.
Generally, YVR has been a good neighbour, said Marc Jurock, president of the Sea Island Community Association, though not all residents of the small subdivision at the southeast corner of the island adjacent to the airport agree.
“It’s right down the middle,” Jurock said. “There are some totally against it and there’s others that say we just have to get what we can.”
For the City of Richmond, YVR securing the air rights for a possible third runway limits the height of buildings in its city centre, which affects its plans to accommodate higher-density housing, to the consternation of city council.
Coun. Carol Day argued that YVR doesn’t need a third runway since it rarely uses the runway on Sea Island’s north side, and only for landings.
“They have basically announced to us, and we have publicly said we do not agree, that they want areas where we can’t build to the (city’s official community plan) because they might build a third runway,” Day said.
The city also remains at odds with YVR’s plan to build a terminal to unload fuel tankers on the south arm of the Fraser River and a 13-kilometre pipeline to the airport.