Dated cost estimates vary wildly
The only time our second longest serving prime minister came to BC was Aug. 13, 1886, when he drove the last spike near Shawnigan Lake for the E & N Railway.
No matter what historical revisionists say about Sir John A. Macdonald’s mixed legacy, it was a momentous occasion for the Island and Canada.
It fulfilled a national dream of building a railway from coast-to-coast, critical since BC had threatened to secede from Confederation if it wasn’t built on the Island.
After considerable efforts to restore the remnants of the Island railway, it has become a pipe dream and the latest example of governance gridlock.
Understandably, taxpayers don’t want another ill-conceived, over budget mega project to give them nightmares.
It took considerable faith and courage for the Island Corridor Foundation (ICF) to step up when the railway was gifted to Islanders. Not every day you are handed an asset worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But unfortunately the jurisdictional complexity it inherited is the stuff of night terrors.
In its glory days the railroad spanned 290 km north-south from Victoria to Courtenay and east-west from Nanaimo to Port Alberni and from Duncan to Lake Cowichan. It crossed the territories of 14 communities, 14 First Nations, four regional districts, and some of the Capital region.
The charity formed in 2003 to keep the lands in public hands and to administer the corridor for the benefit of Islanders has floundered in what is an overwhelming task.
The ICF board structure set it up for failure. The charity draws six directors from within the boundaries representing the regional districts and six from First Nations.
Their ambitious vision is to preserve and use it in perpetuity as ‘one continuous corridor’ to connect and benefit all Island communities and First Nations along the corridor. Its ambitious mission is to expand multi-purpose uses within the corridor, connect to services beyond, and work with a rail operator to enhance freight, passenger and commuter services.
To be fair, any authority with unlimited power and funds would have struggled with this dreamy mandate.
The organization continues to struggle.
No annual general meeting minutes or financial statements are posted as yet for 2021. Budget postings stopped in 2018 and archived documents stopped in 2017, excluding the Initial Business Case of May 2022.
The Initial Business Case does not instill confidence: The less than rigorous analysis includes data from senior governments they say supports the restoration of rail service. Taxpayers or funders though deserve and expect better.
The authors and their credentials are unnamed, saying only it was done “in-house with the help of industry experts.” That is not good enough for a charity looking for substantial public dollars.
Upgrading the entire system on the Island remains a lengthy daydream.
It pitches an intercity commuter services into the CRD, regional trains between areas outside the CRD, as well as freight operations throughout the entire Island, especially Port Alberni and Nanaimo. It also pitches a commuter system operating within the CRD, which for many makes sense.
It estimates construction costs of $381 million and $50 million for the acquisition of rail equipment for a total cost of $431 million. Costing for the project is based on the provincial 2020 Island Rail Corridor Condition Assessment – an entirely different estimate of much higher costs – updated to reflect 2023 dollars.
The business case guesstimates allowed for 5.5 percent inflation in 2022 and six percent this year. But inflation ran at an eye-watering 6.8 per cent, while labour costs and shortages and material costs are continuing to escalate.
The provincial response to the initial business case has been muted, only to say the future of the controversial railway is tied to resolving issues with First Nations.
In September 2021, the BC Court of Appeal ruled a 10-acre right of way along the rail line in Snaw-naw-as reserve land must be returned to the First Nation by March 2023 if it’s not funded and used as a public railway.
The federal government has said next to nothing on the proposed business case or court decision.
Perhaps the best hope locally rests with a transportation working group of the CRD, municipalities, electoral areas and agency partners. The group first met in December 2021 and is advocating for senior government funds for various transportation issues including the rail corridor.
A fall municipal election caused further delays with a new slate of politicians on the ICF board and the CRD-led powerless transportation working group. This underscores the cost to the community of the absence of a transportation authority.
Time is running out for this dream to meet the necessity of the moment and make use of the transportation corridor for one purpose or the other. The most necessary component is the Westshore to Victoria commuter LRT.
Is there enough time – deadline March 14 – to make a decision at a last-minute summit of the feds, province, CRD, ICF board and taxpayers? Time to parley in one of the old rail cars at Shawnigan Lake.
READ MORE
Island Rail Corridor Condition Assessment (March, 2020), Government of B.C.
Initial Business Case, Vancouver Island Corridor Foundation (May 2022).
Foundation makes case for $431-million Island rail service for passengers and freight, Times Colonist, May 19, 2022.
CRD calls for settlement of land claims on rail corridor, Times Colonist, July 15, 2022.
It would be a crime to lose this opportunity to retain this important corridor for future rail transportation and be able to take trucks and traffic off the the roads.
I’m disappointed and flummoxed by the resistance raised that will eventually kill this proposal, especially that raised recently by Chief Gordon Edwards of the Snow-Naw-As First Nation.
With all due respect I feel that his reaction, which is filled with much negativity and blame regarding this proposal, simply further divides our country and does nothing to restore harmony between our cultures, merely points fingers at the rest of us and fails to look at the positive attributes of the Island Corridor rail link.
Furthermore, suggesting that there is no Business Case for the rail link is a non-starter. What public, transportation project can ever provide a business case, whereby it should be self-supporting in all manners and ways? Most everywhere else, public transportation methods are subsidized by a variety of levels of government, so where’s the business case in that?
If this doesn’t proceed how do the rest of us Islanders cope with the many challenges of improving the future of our transportation woes, including the economic, environmental and traffic congestion challenges that will arise while such “improvements” are being undertaken? What about the bottle necks in other communities such as Mill Bay, Duncan, Ladysmith?
The lack of support and action by Chief Edwards and, in fact by both senior levels of government, are absolutely abhorrent, do not consider the impacts upon other Island communities and their ever-increasing challenges around public transportation, how selfish is that?
As the rest of the country and the world are all fast forwarding to the future by using LRT and other rail transportation solutions to move future populations from place to place our hopes and dreams that would envision a greener and more effective ways of helping our overall nation, Canada, to diminish global warming and replace it with environmentally improved ways and means of transportation on Vancouver Island.
However, I suppose, if the Snow-Naw-As First Nation really wish to retreat into the dark ages, provide for themselves, and continue to point fingers of blame about what they perceive as the dire consequences of a few trains crossing their lands, then let them go. We can simply modify the existing plan and terminate the line in Nanaimo. Done deal!
I’m sure that other Up-Island communities will thank Chief Edwards for everything he’s done to wreak chaos on the highways and destroy the one chance we all have to bring our communities together.