SWITCHING TRACKS
Too late for Surrey to dump LRT?
Several Metro Vancouver mayors say they will not support the Surrey mayor-elect’s push to change the region’s 10-year transportation plan to include a SkyTrain line in Surrey instead of a planned lightrail project. However, Doug McCallum may not need widespread support at TransLink’s Mayors’ Council to start the process.
McCallum has promised that at the inaugural Surrey council meeting on Nov. 5, he will move to cancel the $1.65-billion Surrey-Newton-Guildford light rail project, which has been approved by three levels of government, is fully funded and is going through the first step in the procurement process.
McCallum’s next step would be to seek the support of the Mayors’ Council.
It’s unclear how McCallum will proceed — if he’ll ask for SkyTrain to be studied or go straight for project approval, for instance — because since his election, he has not made himself available to Postmedia to answer questions about his plans.
Most matters that come before the TransLink Mayor’s Council are decided by weighted vote.
As the two municipalities with the largest populations, Vancouver and Surrey get the most “votes”: 32 and 26.
For a motion to pass, it needs at least 68 of the 134 available “votes” on the council.
Paddy Smith, a professor of urban studies and political science at Simon Fraser University, said the hurdle of getting enough votes to explore the possibility of SkyTrain — to study it, or have a business case drawn up — is not insurmountable. “It seems to me it’s possible we could expand the discussion: What else should be on the transportation table? Now, you start to get into the horse trading.”
Vancouver’s mayor-elect, Kennedy Stewart, has already suggested he may support McCallum’s bid for SkyTrain. “I just have to wait and hear what the details of (mayor-elect) McCallum’s plan are and see what other support he’s been able to build, and also to make sure that he’s familiar with my push to get the Broadway subway built all the way to UBC,” he said.
If Stewart does vote in favour of exploring building SkyTrain, McCallum needs only 10 more votes, which could come from as few as one or two municipalities.
Township of Langley Mayor Jack Froese said he would be open to seeing a business case for SkyTrain, if that’s the will of the council. “Just change to SkyTrain with no funding, no business case, no design work, I certainly wouldn’t agree to that. I want to see the proof first why it would be better and why we should have it before I would ever support it.”
McCallum’s promise consists of two main actions: stopping the LRT project, and then building a SkyTrain line.
The first step will be the least difficult to complete because it’s unlikely that the other mayors will stand in the way of cancelling a project a city doesn’t want.
“I think it’s important to recognize that a project like this doesn’t automatically just transfer to a different location and a different technology without a significant amount of discussion and a significant amount of work to understand what that means,” said New Westminster Mayor Jonathan Cote, who is trying to keep an open mind.
Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie called the prospect of reopening the 10-year plan, for which there was broad political support, “highly problematic.”
“If you open it up there’s no guarantee that you’re limiting your discussions to alternatives in Surrey. I’ve heard a number of other priorities being suggested,” said Brodie. “If you want to compromise the plan, then you take your chances.”
Added Froese: “It’s one thing to talk about it in a campaign because it’s popular. It’s another thing to actually put the dollars down. If Surrey wants to pay for it, more power to them.”