CUPE 7000 president Gerry Cunningham doesn’t know whether to believe the provincial government when it comes to the proposed Evergreen SkyTrain line.
B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure recently announced it is once again moving ahead with plans for the Evergreen rapid transit line connecting Coquitlam to Vancouver via Port Moody and Burnaby.
It has issued a request for qualifications for private partner applicants “capable of designing, building and financing the project.”
But, that isn’t enough to convince Cunningham that the transit line envisaged back when Bill Vander Zalm was premier in the 1980s will ever see the light of day.
Cunningham told Business in Vancouver: “There’s a huge concern that the money isn’t there.”
Victoria has said it would contribute $400 million to the $1.4 billion project. Ottawa has agreed to pay $417 million and TransLink is expected to contribute $400 million.
Cunningham’s local represents about 540 SkyTrain workers and if the Evergreen line was to be completed, he expects the number of staff would rise by about 24 workers.
Some of Cunningham’s skepticism stems from what he sees as the unlikelihood of the provincial government finding a private partner willing to invest.
“With the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, the government kept saying it was going to go ahead [come] hell or high water. They had sought a private investor and there was going to be a private investor, but because of the downturn in the economy, the investor walked away and the government had to go ahead because they’d basically started construction on the highway leading to town.”