Provincial budget numbers that show the bridge lost $86 million last year, followed by projected losses of $100 million in each of the next three years, pushing its total debt to $3.68 billion by 2018. The losses are significantly higher than what was predicted in 2012-13, when it was forecast the net loss for 2014-15 would be $28.3 million. …
The Port Mann Bridge is on track, Johnson insisted, and will likely see revenues exceed expenses in another 12 to 15 years. However, that timeline is far longer than what was presented by the Liberals in 2012 when they forecast that tolls would bring in more than $200 million annually and the project would break even within five years.
Since then, revenue projections have been falling, not rising. By early 2014, lower-than-expected traffic estimates prompted TI Corp. to revise its revenue estimates to $144 million for 2014, $159 million in 2015, and $174 million in 2016 — about 20 per cent less than previously anticipated.
And, according to the latest budget numbers, the revenue projections have dropped even further: landing at $122 million last year, and forecast at $128 million in 2015-16, and $137 million in 2016-17. …
Johnson said high borrowing costs and low revenues, as well as the province’s decision to open the new South Fraser Perimeter Road at the same time as Port Mann, likely had an effect on traffic numbers as well as free, untolled crossings such as the Pattullo, which drew vehicles away from the new highway network.
Who could have predicted the opening of the SFPR, much less the existence of free crossings?
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Commentary from Sun Columnist Vaughn Palmer:
VICTORIA — While the B.C. Liberals charge ahead on replacing the George Massey tunnel with a toll bridge on the same financial model as the Port Mann, the latter project has become a chronic money loser, according to the government’s own budget statements.
The fiscal tale of woe is spelled out in the accounts for the Transportation Investment Corporation, the Crown corporation established by the Liberals to oversee the Port Mann and lately ticketed to take on the Massey replacement as well.
When the Liberals launched the TI corporation (as it is known) back in 2009, they envisioned it would be able to put the Port Mann and related infrastructure on a paying basis by next year. …
The main culprit on the loss side is the mounting cost of servicing the $3.3 billion project debt, currently $131 million and climbing. And while the Liberals point to increased tolling revenue on the project as a sign of emerging financial health, the budget projections tell a different story.
Tolls on the Port Mann are scheduled to bring in an additional $26 million over the next three years, an increase of 20 per cent. But debt is projected to grow by $38 million, or 30 per cent, over the same period.
With the main component of expenses growing faster than the sole source of revenues, one doesn’t need a pocket calculator to realize that the tide of red ink can only keep rising.
For the three years starting April 1, the TI corporation is forecast to endure further losses totalling $300 million, which in turn will push the cumulative deficit for the first seven years of operations to just over $700 million.
So much for Liberal claims that the financial turnaround is at hand.
What an embarrassing and completely avoidable fiasco. worse than the Fast Ferries, Vancouver Convention Centre and the BC Place roof cost overruns combined. Worse part is, it appears that the same people are more than willing to do it all again at Massey. It defies logic.
Give it a break. Here’s real reason to be embarrased. The VCC was a critical investment who’s pre-Olympic timing happened to coincide with a sharp bldg boom where labour & material costs spiked. Anyone in the industry (not peripheral to it) realizes that fact. The VCC held 550 events in the last year which hosted 155,000 delegates.
A bridge needs to be measured over decades, not months. Unless it’s short (attention) span. Fiasco? Look up ‘fast ferries.’ That defined logic.
Funny, the Auditor-General found differently: http://www.procurementoffice.ca/2014/12/04/385-million-cost-overrun-in-bc-olympic-convention-centre-project/
As always, the post-project justifications ignore the critics, which were numerous even before the project went from reinforcing the original bridge structure to twinning, then to another leap in voodoo logic to megabridge.
And as always, no mention that the operating and external costs will be there as long as the bridge stands without any method of cost recovery or remediation.
To paraphrase Arthur Erickson, on the Lions Gate Bridge; Everyone thought it was a crazy idea. Nobody would live all the way over in West or North Vancouver.
Sorry, but there was already a bridge here. The issue is the overbuilding and mismanagement of the replacement bridge. Why do you apologize for poor decision-making and the wasting of our tax dollars?
I sometimes wonder what role Ken Dobell (former COV City Manager, original TransLink CEO and then go to guy for premier Campbell) played in these megaprojects.
You can’t really “right-size” a bridge – otherwise it would become outdated too quickly and you’d have the naysayers screaming that you screwed up –
i.e. like what a lot of people keep saying about the Canada Line (despite it being “expandable” by adding more parts (i.e. trains)).
A bridge isn’t as easily “scalable” in the same way that you can add trains (and the single tracking of the guideway was the brainchild of Richmond City Council’s fear of its shadow).
PS – one thing I know is that whenever I drive back during the summer after a weekend in the Okanagan (Sunday night), I no longer hit stop and go traffic in Langley (or even Abbotsford) and don’t spew the accompanying emissions in what was usually an hour long traffic jam. That was pretty much situation “normal” in the 10 years before the new bridge.
A bridge is most certainly “scalable” when you design it with high-capacity HOV lanes and especially rail transport. Over 70% of the Port Mann traffic is still subsumed by single-occupant vehicles, and you cannot feasibly continue planning for that scenario forever. There isn’t enough energy, financial or land resources to continue in that vein. Transit alternatives and better urban planning are imperative.
No other city in the world has built 10-lane megabridges and freeways for such a low population. It is stupidity on steroids. The critics long ago predicted this very scenario: Overcapacity will not pay for itself and will burden the public with increasing debt while fostering 1950s sprawl.
This bridge is primarily about out a healthy economy, Canada wide. Your pensions, your jobs, your quality of life off the tax revenue funded social services, healthcare or education depends on it !
Indeed this bridge and Port Mann will be deemed visionary in 20 years and the SFPR as far too small.
With 1M+ people to arrive in the next few decades plus almost 3M here already, plus 30+ ports with little expansion room on Burrard inlet, we need more road and bridge capacity. With an HOV lane three more per side is the very minimum, and as such 10 lanes total is good for volume in 20 or 40 years, perhaps a tad too big for 2025, but who cares as the extra lane is almost free. As such, rather build too big than too narrow.
What about a possible highway extension to Vancouver Island over so Vancouver Island can take some industrial activity and larger ports for exports and associated jobs & tax revenue, rather than just civil servants, students, tourism, seniors and the navy, who all contribute very little to a healthy tax base on V Island ?
Canada and especially BC and especially MetroVan is an exporting nation / region. All highways, trains and rivers end here. As such we need infrastructure to move stuff that comes by truck, car, boat or train and ship it from Canada to Asia, the fastest growing region in the world, or from Asia to the rest of Canada.
Muesli eating blogging vegetarians sitting in their tiny condo in dense Yaletown or Kits would be well advised to get out more, and spend some time with families or truckers or blue collar workers not blogging here, as their livelihood depends on proper infrastructure.
You don’t usually go ad hominem Thomas. Please resume not doing so.
The issue is not whether we should have bridges, roads and tunnels. As a muesli-eating blogging vegetarian, even I accept that. What I don’t accept is the outrageously poor planning and execution that went into the new bridge, at tax-payers expense! As voters, we get what we deserve, and if we just shrug when our government admits it has written no business case for the new Massey bridge, or when the Ministry of Transportation puts out toll revenue projections for the Port Mann that are clearly pie-in-the-sky, well that’s the type of mismanagement we’ll continue to get.
Move right along, everyone, because bridges are good for the economy!
A bridge like that last 100 years, likely longer. As such, any business case is shoddy as no one can look that far out. BC’s infrastructure, especially under the anti-business NDP in the 1990s, was inadequate. When I first moved here in the late 80’s Hwy 1 in W-Van had traffic lights still, and PM bridge traffic was a mess. Are you suggesting that that is the preferred state we should aim for ?
We need to replace Patullo bridge too, ASAP, and yes we need some decent rapid transit projects like Broadway subway to UBC, Canadaline extension south, but also N-Van and W-Van Marine Drive decongestion via a subway or elevated train into Vancouver and along the N-Shore, via E-Van and Second narrows Bridge, and a widened Lionsgate. Look at all the construction in N-Van and W-Van. Look at the new housing south of the Fraser. Vancouver is home to 30+ ports at the end of pipelines, highways or railways. They ALL end here in Vancouver. It is the only sizable port to Asia. LNG should have been developed in the 1990s.
MetroVan’s 2040 traffic and transit plan is MISGUIDED. Not in line with what people want.
Solar panels or carbon taxes are better ? Doing nothing is better ? An 8 lane bridge, with a maybe 7% savings, congested in 25 years, is better ? Pretending people wants condos only, no one wants houses and no one wants economic growth is better ?
More realism please, less dreaming of a green utopia, based on pedestrians and bikes !
“Are you suggesting that that is the preferred state we should aim for ?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
You mentioned before that the bike path didn’t have a business case, and that the public shouldn’t be providing for the private good. You’ve also mentioned how we should heavily tax those who want to park money, because their private money isn’t benefitting the public good. How can you also be for massive public investments, which have been previously determined to not have the best business case, for the public good, and also not demanding that those who are receiving benefit (the pipes and the railways) not have a fee to pay for the infrastructure they ‘need’? (private good)
[Honestly these opinions seem to cross purposes. Please explain further how they don’t.]
More realism please, less dreaming of a sheen’d dystopia, based on shipyards and pipes! (ok, this last sentence is just being cheeky, I’ll admit)
With your comments, Thomas, I can see the provincial debt doubling to 130 billion dollars in the next two decades, and taxes being raised to cover highway maintenance operations on half-empty, weed-sprouting tarmac in perpetuity. And that’s before the price of fuel rises again and incrementally takes out measureable chunks of single-occupant car commuters, and further reduces toll revenue. With the Milton Friedmanders at the helm that will mean walking down the well-worn path of cutting social programs to partially finance megaprojects while building debt.
You can’t continue living in the I Love Lucy decade.
With economic growth comes higher tax revenue. Debt in isolation matters not. One of the few things Justin Trudeau is right on. Debt to GDP ratio matters. Road tolls can be collected on all bridges, or eventually highways. Land transfer taxes, PST and income taxes on people and businesses on increased commercial activity or more people here.
There is good debt and there is bad debt. Debt for economic growth or income producing entities is good debt: roads, bridges, ports, tunnels, airports, electric grid, dams, power generators (yes they could be solar or win if it makes sense), education (to a point to diminishing return), subways, water & sewer lines etc .
Most Canadians have a mortgage on a house. Are you saying that this is bad ?
What is better: a person A with no house and no debt, or a person B that owns a $1.5M house with a $500,000 mortgage on it ? Person B has a mortgage that is say 10x his/her income. Is this person better off than person A who also has a $50,000 income ? Debt is a financial tool. Like any tool (a knife say) it can be lethal or it can do good. Shall we forbid all breadkinives in kitchens across the nation as occasionally some whacko kills someone with a breadknife ?
Freeway and over-designed bridges are firmly on the “bad” debt side of the ledger. They and the low density subdivisions they foster are a net perpetual drain on public resources. They do not have the same economic multipliers or life cycle cost recovery capacity as transit or walking-based communities, and certainly cannot generate anywhere near the development response return that more than balances out their capital cost.
Yet, people like to live in less dense communities with lawns and nice houses and prefer it over dense high-rises or wobbly bus based transit. So, what is mispriced then ? Land ? Roads ? Sewer lines ? Gasoline ? Consumption ? Incomes ?
A “freeway” is not really free if the bridge is tolled and gasoline is taxed high. What level of taxation here would you deem adequate ?
*some* people … and then to some extent because there is essentially nothing in between tower and suburb
Thomas, why would you think for a moment that “freeways” should be free in terms of cost? The free refers to being free of intersections, ie a controlled access highway. Nothing is free.
“free” as in “no toll” .. isn’t that the definition of a freeway ? Otherwise it is called a tollway. Or am I missing s.th. here ?
https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=freeway+with+tolls suggests that there is no standard … tolled freeway, tolled highway, freeway with tolls … its certainly not a binary freeway/tollway thing.
What “people” are you referring to? The 40% of our population who are single and above 50 years of age? Chances are they have downsized, or are thinking of it.
The key is housing choice. You have very little of it in suburbia where tract housing predominates far away from amenities and services that permit you to age in one neighbourhood.
Freeway / bridge tolls cover only the capital cost, and if you’re smart, the construction financing cost. As repeatedly mentioned, all roads pose a net burden on the operating budgets of all public agencies.
Gasoline taxes are actually quite reasonable here. They are also the only stable component in the price, whereas the companies respond hourly to the fluctuations in the world price and in accordance with their own profit margin take.
Personally I think we should add the transit first, and if that is insufficient, THEN look at making everything bigger/wider/etc… its a very business-like concept to look to eek all the efficiencies out of a current infrastructure instead of replacing it wholesale … only when those efficiencies are no longer achievable, should other measures be prudent.
No one can excuse you for not having a vision Thomas.
You would cover this
http://www.vancouvertrails.com/contest/2012/gallery/photos/2012-09-14_23_08_15_DSC05722.jpg
with this
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/rows-california-suburban-homes-contemporary-southern-hillside-50706762.jpg
with your bridge over the islands.
Without any infrastructure investments and constant opposition to any development BC will become like California. Nice for rich Silicon Valley millionaires, but unaffordable for the middle class. Not every middle class worker, retiree or even low income worker likes to live in a condo. Many – most even – prefer a house in the burbs if they could afford it with parks nearby, no noise from cars or sirens or bums pushing their shopping carts begging for handouts or “safe” drug injection sites nearby. Many – most probably – prefer to escape the urban jungle.
How else do you explain that Surrey or Langley is growing faster than more scenic Vancouver – especially for families ?
The trick is to be BALANCED, i.e. allow housing choices in all price and density options. One size does not fit all. We need infrastructure to connect it all.
The picture you show is like Port Moody. It used to be picturesque. Now it has dozens of high-rises. You prefer that ? You prefer 1-2h line-ups in front of PM bridge over smooth flowing traffic ? Ask people in Langley, Abbotsford or Coquitlam about the new PM bridge and you’d get a 90%+ approval rating. Yes 10 lanes is overkill today. But not in 2030 when they will call the bridge and CC visionary. Lionsgate will still be 3 lanes and has people fuming. E-Van might still be full of druggies. We shall see.
I’ll certainly agree with your second last paragraph, but our views of implementation are polar opposites. I’d prefer transport options that embed the most economic and energy-use productivity, and that starts with Nikes and moves to transit which dovetails with land use planning. Cars and freeways and their progeny (single use sprawling subdivisions) are dead last and very costly to society, and cannot be sustained forever from any perspective.
Housing is only one component, and there is a Pacific Ocean-sized vacuum between 7,000 ft2 lots in suburbia where you need to drive 3 km for a loaf of bread, and 50-storey high rises surrounding rapid transit stations. One of my objectives is to outline how to fill the vacuum.
And why stop at 10 lanes over the Salish Sea? Why not 19 or 20 or 25 just to make sure future capacity to ruin the Beautiful BC landscape is fully realized.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e8efD1JeKZU/UMGGIuy3e7I/AAAAAAAABy4/Y5CCJAF2Cgw/s640/american-rush-hour.jpg
The reduction in traffic over the Port Mann Bridge is clearly due to the increased ridership of the buses. Since TransLink didn’t pay towards the building of the bridge it must pay the province some of this newfound bounty.
You need to recalibrate your evidence. Drivers are fleeing the tolls to overrun the Puttullo. The same toll-avoidance thing happened to Golden Ears. The whole toll estimating thing never accounted for an obvious negative trend, but the critics did way back when.
Those bus riders are paying a toll too. And the two-zone fare is more than the PM toll. That is, if two-zone fare still apply. Still, even with one zone, each fare is 2/3rds the bridge toll. Transit users have been paying every time they have boarded over the last 100 years.
Thomas: ““free” as in “no toll” .. isn’t that the definition of a freeway ? Otherwise it is called a tollway. Or am I missing s.th. here ?”
No, it isn’t the definition. Freeway is the common language term for a controlled access highway. Such roads may be tolled or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-access_highway