Surrey still negotiating light-rail debt repayment
City offers TransLink land and cash
The City of Surrey is planning to use a combination of cash and land to pay the $38.8-million debt it owes to TransLink for the cancellation of a planned light-rail line.
According to general manager of finance Kam Grewal, most of the reimbursement — about $30 million — will be land, and the rest cash.
However, the city said in a statement that it was unable to provide further details because the agreement with TransLink has not yet been finalized.
It’s expected that more information will be available sometime next month.
“The City of Surrey has committed to a compensation agreement for costs associated with the change from LRT to SkyTrain,” TransLink confirmed in a statement. “TransLink and the City of Surrey are currently working through the details of the reimbursement agreement.”
The Surrey-Newton-Guildford
light-rail project, which would have seen 27 kilometres of at-grade rail line built on three major corridors in Surrey, was suspended indefinitely in November 2018.
Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum had promised during that year’s municipal election campaign that the LRT project would be replaced with a SkyTrain line to Langley along Fraser Highway.
A business case has been prepared for Surrey-Langley SkyTrain and delivered to the federal and provincial governments, and is still under review.
A draft memorandum of understanding between the city and TransLink, which was released last July, states the two parties will enter into a reimbursement agreement that will see Surrey repay TransLink the money the transit authority “unnecessarily” spent on the light-rail project before it was suspended.
TransLink had estimated that it spent $54 million to plan the line, and Surrey will be responsible for up to $39 million.
The reimbursement agreement is supposed to address how the city will pay the debt — money, in-kind property contributions, rights of way and/or road dedications, certain commercial rights for future use of or access to city streets or other city lands or a reduction in costs through a transfer of scope elements — and a timeline for reimbursement.
It will also deal with the fact that Surrey could be on the hook for another $5.4 million if there is no decision to implement rapid transit along King George Boulevard by the end of 2021.
A reimbursement agreement must be complete before the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project is included in a funded investment plan approved by the TransLink board of directors and Mayors’ Council.