Stephen Rees’s blog

Stuart Ramsey writes to me that a four-page newspaper pull-out, produced by the City of Burnaby will be appearing this week in the Burnaby Now and the Burnaby News Leader, as the result of a Council motion to “prepare a statement with respect to the City’s position on the Gateway Program for publication in local newspapers.”

I have uploaded the pdf file here (burnaby-2008-05-29-gateway-newspaper-pull-out)  (if you are not a resident of Burnaby) as it seems to me that many people will be interested in the City’s position.

Forwarded at the request of Ben West

Our Environment Minister in BC may be close to signing the environmental certification for the Gateway mega -project.

If Barry Penner signs the certification for this project his legacy would be that of the Environment Minister that gave the green light to the most counter productive and in fact destructive transportation mega-project of our generation!

On Minster Penner’s website he claims “The BC Government is working to aggressively address global warming and climate change” he even goes on to clearly state “there is still more work to be done if we are to meet our legally-mandated goal of reducing BC’s greenhouse gas emissions by 33% by 2020“. How he could say this one day and then rubber stamp what many are calling “the gateway to global warming” is unconscionable.

Concerned British Columbian’s are writing letters and emails to the minister of the environment and the Premier insisting that the environmental assessment not be signed and that genuine consultation take place. This is your chance to have your voice heard and tell Barry Penner and Gordon Campbell to do the right thing.

Here are just a few key points to consider:

The various elements of the Gateway plan will drastically increase the lower mainlands contribution to green house emissions that cause global warming and pollution levels in the region. The tripling of shipping vessels and heavy truck traffic off delta port will feed into new induced traffic that will be find its way onto the SFPR, the Twinned Port Mann Bridge and then the widened highway 1 and then into the heart of the lower -mainland. To make things worse the Gateway Project will induce car dependent suburban sprawl that leads to further global warming emissions and less healthy community.

The South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR) will harm and maybe kill off Burns Bog, the lungs of the lower mainland our carbon sink!

The expansion of Delta port on Roberts Bank has serious impacts on migratory birds such as the Sandpiper that relies on the region to survive as they fly north. Also Port expansion at Delta Port may severally impact Orca Whales whose population in the area are already dwindling.

The Gateway Project as a whole would impact 1000 hectares of farmland, some of B.C.s most fertile.

The Gateway mega project contradicts the last democratic community planning process that was held around the region, the Livable Region Strategic Plan. Gateway induces car dependent sprawl and starves public transit by monopolizing billions of dollars in public transportation funding.

All of this while not examining the impact of rising fuel prices on the feasibility of the project compared to other options. In fact it has recently been un-covered through a freedom of information request that the project managers used the price of $0.80 a litre in their models for studying the project over the length of the contracts which is the next 25 - 40 years!
No contracts can be signed until Barry Penner signs the environmental assessment.

No meaningful public consultations have yet to be held with the Premier, the Environment Minister or the Transportation Minister. The open houses and community meetings that have taken place have been well orchestrated Public Relation campaigns that were more like focus groups than a genuine attempt to decide the fate of this multi-billion dollar mega -project based on the public will. Make sure they hear your feedback. Send an email today!

Minister Penner
101, 7388 Vedder Road
Chilliwack, BC
V2R 4E4

barry.penner.mla@leg.bc.ca

Premier Campbell

3615 West 4th Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V6R 1P2

premier@gov.bc.ca

Please CC a copy of your letter to gateway@wildernesscommittee.org .

If you would like to stay informed about the campaign to stop “the gateway to global warming” and the campaign to get transit before freeways email gateway@wildernesscommittee.org with the subject line ADD ME.

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged a record 14.4 percent in March from a year earlier, while consumer confidence slumped to its lowest in 16 years in May as gasoline prices surged.

This is bad news for us as well. First the US is our biggest market. For BC we have already seen the effect on our lumber industry, but it is going to effect everything. Canada has had a wealthy neighbour to the south that has wanted - and paid for - our exports. For a long time we thought that had something to do with a weak loonie, but of course we don’t have that any longer. Although it looks a lot stronger against the dollar than it does against other major currencies.

But if course it is also very bad news indeed on the people who have been betting on Vancouver grabbing more of the US travel and transportation business. The port, airport and the tourism businesses who had been expecting that we could do well out of what had seemed an insatiable US appetite for consumer goods and services. Fortunately tourism could pick up from Europe and the pacific rim - but it will have to acknowledge higher airfares. For the all the stuff that has been packed into containers for the shelves of Target and Wal-Mart in China - well that was then, this is now.

And inflation is up too.

So if you had been planning for a major infrastructure project, that depended on growth in the US, now might be a good time to have second thoughts

Canadian Press

A short, pithy piece which once again points out the folly of our port managers, who have been pursuing a strategy based on cheap oil.

In fact it is so short I will let it speak for itself

The high price of energy is eroding the advantages of globalization by raising the costs of shipping materials around the world, says CIBC World Markets.

The bank says the cost of moving goods, not the burden of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade Tuesday.

In fact, the report says, the explosion in transportation costs caused by the record levels in the price of oil has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the past three decades.

In 2000, when oil was US$20 a barrel, the cost of transportation was the equivalent of a three per cent U.S. tariff rate, the bank says.

Now, transportation costs are equivalent to a nine per cent tariff, and at US$150 a barrel for oil they would amount to 11 per cent tariff, about the average of tariff rates in the 1970s.

China has been among the most adversely impacted, with steel exports to the U.S. falling by 20 per cent from a year ago, and other exports that carry a high freight cost component also showing declines.

Trade is based on the economic doctrine of “comparative advantage”, and the cost of transportation has always been a significant part of the calculation - trade figures are quoted as either CIF (including carriage, insurance and freight) or FOB (free on board, usually at the port of origin). And of course the huge size of modern freighters and the massive investment in containerization all helped to keep those costs down. But they have probably achieved all the economies possible and now fuel costs are rising and it will take some time for fuel saving technologies - such as the return of sailing ships - to get going. And before you imagine I mean tea clippers, there have been some very successful experiments in sail assisted ships in recent years.

But it stll seems to me more likely that in our current planning horizon (the next twenty to thirty years) port expansion should not be a high priority.

UPDATE May 28

There is a very similar opinion piece in the Sun today

Globe and Mail

I am very grateful that the The Tyee has this neat column headed “Reported Elsewhere” which meant I finally caught up with this story. You may have heard that Barrack Obama has gone on record as opposing CN’s acquisition of the EJ&E (”The Juice”) a railway in suburban Chicago that would help it avoid the congestion in the US biggest rail hub.

CN has run into significant public opposition in its bid for approval of the acquisition of Elgin Joliet & Eastern Railway Co. CN wants the rail line so it can bypass Chicago through the suburb of Barrington and cut nearly 30 hours off the time it takes container trains to reach destinations in the American Southeast – and that means a faster route from Prince Rupert into key U.S. markets.

“It certainly would add tremendous market weight to our gateway,” Mr. Krusel said of the EJ&E acquisition. “If they are successful in getting that line, it will be 100 hours [from Prince Rupert] to Memphis. We’ll be just as close in time as L.A./Long Beach – maybe closer.”

But what catches my attention is the broader context. Prince Rupert is not, at the moment, doing very well. Partly that is simply teething trouble with a new facility. But as noted elsewhere, the world is changing too

Prince Rupert is holding its own while other West Coast ports are seeing declines in container shipments now. “A year ago we would have expected a second carrier here,” he said. “That hasn’t happened. Carriers are reducing service on the Pacific, everywhere.

Prince Rupert has plenty of spare capacity and the demand for moving containers from China to the US is declining. So what on earth are we doing pressing ahead with a port expansion at Roberts Bank? There are all sorts of questions raised about its environmental impact and plenty of reason to suspect that whatever studies were done were pre-determined. In BC we seem to think that somehow we are immune and do not need to concern ourselves about ecology. But more than that, why are we proposing to spend vast sums on infrastructure for a port expansion that seems to be destined to be a white elephant.

Prince Rupert has a two day sailing advantage over Vancouver for Asian Pacific trade - and that is important in reducing cost, both inventories and ship’s bunkers. And the CN line through Chicago looks like a lot better bet then the congested lower mainland, where rail investment means the odd overpass here and there - not massive increases in capacity and some very weak links indeed.

By the way, has anyone ever heard one of those management types from Port of Vancouver ever admit that trans pacific container trade was actually declining?

A little while ago I posted Ben West’s piece on the Gateway forecast, which used a gas price of 80c/l. The chart above I stumbled upon. The source is Bespoke Investment Group and I have no idea who they are and I am not recommending them. And the chart could be updated to $135 a barrel last week.

The Gateway modellers used 2003 data, which if you look at the chart was just around the time when the trend turns upwards. Now, I am not saying that what they did then was wrong - although I think most modellers would throw in some additional “what if scenarios” or “sensitivity tests” just to show what could happen if the assumptions are out. And also note that other forecasters were blindsided by the way that oil prices have taken off. Just like the climate change scientists have been proved wrong. Climate change is actually happening much faster than anyone predicted.

What is bizarre, however, is the way that Kevin Falcon and Gordon Campbell are sticking to their guns. The forecast is now five years old - and obviously by steering the ship from looking at its wake, missed something very important up ahead. Like the fact that VMT in the US is actually dropping - and that has not happened on a month to month basis since 1979.

Of course, the Gateway folks want to pretend that their plan is not going to depend on people driving more. They like to maintain the fiction that it is “necessary” for the port to expand, which is why we “need” a twinned Port Mann, a widened Highway #1 and the SFPR. (Forget the fact that the freight goes by rail for now.) And, of course, if you steadfastly refuse to expand transit but fob people off with a $14bn pie in the sky, someone else will pay for it, transit “plan” you could even be right that many folks will have no choice but to keep on trucking. For rapid transit will not reach places like Langley in my lifetime the way things are going.

But the other things that have been happening, that this oil price spike illustrates, is the collapse of the US dollar and the horrendous impact this is having on trans-pacific trade. Which was supposed to grow rapidly, forever, according to the Port officials, but has actually been declining. Because China now prefers to ship to Europe whose currency is much stronger.

It is very unfortunate that in North America there is a perception that being decisive and holding your ground indicates a strong politician. One who adjusts policies to changing circumstances is said to “flip flop” or be indecisive. As a result we have had a long history of quite dreadful decisions based on “stay the course” when it is quite obvious to all around that it is monumentally stupid to do so.

The world has changed. America is no longer #1. The dollar is not the most favoured store of value. The US economy is not growing. They do not like to use the word “recession”, but that is the one that everyone outside the US is thinking. Gateway was never a very good idea, because it ignored a whole number of external influences. It assumed away any inconvenient facts. But that was then. Now it looks like the daftest idea since prohibition. Because it assumes that the Port of Vancouver can get more trade here that would otherwise go through US west coast ports.

“When circumstance change, I change my mind. What do you do?” (often attributed to John Maynard Keynes, though there seems no evidence that he said it)

You have no idea how frustrated I have felt since Ben West told me this report was coming - but of course I could say nothing until it was released. So here is the whole press release and the sordid, but absolutely unsurprising story.

Confidential documents reveal BC government did not consider rising oil
prices for multi-billion dollar transportation project*
Gateways feasibility was based on gas prices of $0.80/litre!

Vancouver, BC

Freedom of Information documents provided to the Wilderness
Committee revealed that BC government officials failed to take into account
rapidly rising fuel costs when they were establishing the feasibility of the
proposed multi-billion dollar Gateway Project to expand highways, bridges
and port facilities around Metro Vancouver.

Transportation experts anticipate that rapidly increasing fuel prices will
reduce personal vehicle use and increase the demand for public
transportation. The BC governments analysis of the Gateway Projects and gas
prices was based on a forecast of gas at $0.80/Litre, but gas in Metro
Vancouver is currently selling at around $1.30/Litre, and is projected to
rise. The BC governments modeling is based on a 2003 Canadian Automobile
Association (CAA) study entitled “Driving Costs” which explores overall
operating expenses of vehicles.

“We are disturbed to see that the traffic modeling was based on such out of
date figures. At best these projections are shortsighted; at worst they are
could be construed as an attempt to justify spending billions of public
dollars on a project that will not serve the publics interest,” said Ben
West, Wilderness Committee Healthy Communities Campaigner.

Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request the Wilderness Committee
uncovered an email conversation between government staff. One BC government
official justifies not taking into account rising fuel prices by commenting,
“What is important, is the relative cost of fuel/operating expenses
vis-a-vis other costs such as transit fares and the value of time, which are
also not escalated in the future model years.” If the price of transit was
in fact increasing by the same rate as a gasoline, a one-zone transit fare
today would be around $4.97: in fact it is only $2.50.

In recent months there has already been evidence the price of gas impacting
BC residents transportation choices. A poll conducted by the Hotel
Association of Canada says 22 % of those surveyed gave the price of gasoline
as a reason for travelling less. A recent BCAA survey shows that 49% of
those surveyed will not take road trips this summer because of increased gas
prices.

Earlier this month, a Goldman Sachs analyst predicted prices could hit
between $150 and 200 a barrel over the next two years. The current price of
gas at the pump is the result of the price of a barrel hovering around the
recent record highs of over a $125 dollars a barrel.

“The closer you look at the Gateway Program the worse it looks. If Gateway
were allowed to proceed, it would suck a massive amount of money away from
public transit at a time when expanded transit is needed more than ever
because of skyrocketing fuel costs. When we take into account Gateways
projected negative impacts on wildlife, Burns Bog, heritage buildings,
livable communities, pollution and associated health problems and climate
change, the more clear it becomes that under-estimating rising gas prices is
the BC governments latest attempt at putting lipstick on a pig. Gateway is
simply a dead end and must be reconsidered,” added West.

Now if you read here very much you will know that the forecasts for the Gateway projects like South Fraser Perimeter Road and Highway #1 leave a great deal to be desired. Basically the government just decided to ignore any effect that did not support the project. They used a technique that managed to avoid awkward questions about induced traffic and impact on land use.

But the most stunning revelation now is that the modellers did into even look at any possible future when gas might cost more, and the justification was that they also assumed that transit fares and the value of time would rise at exactly the same rate as gasoline!

I know some of the people who did this work. I have been defending them, since when we worked together at Translink they were very careful to ensure that we had reasonably good figures. Nothing is ever perfect, especially in forecasting. And the base data in this region for things like the overall demand for travel (based on a tiny 5,000 person sample - less than 0.04% of trips) and especially transit use (we had no idea of transit ridership as they had got rid of the ride checkers years ago in a fit of cost cutting) - well it leaves a lot to be desired. Everyone always makes assumptions. You have to. But, common sense suggests that you try to make the best assumptions you can and do hedge them around with “what if” scenarios.

Oil prices have shot up, but gas prices at the pumps, though they have risen, have not gone up at the same rate. Value of time is usually given as half the average wage rate. We know from recent StatsCan figures that wage rates have not kept pace with inflation: real incomes would have been falling if not for the way that government transfer payments (pensions and so on) have made up the difference. But I repeat VoT is based on wages.

Transit fares are a tricky one since they go up in 25c jumps once every two years or so. So the whole “keeping pace with inflation” argument is bedevilled by choice of dates. But it is also well understood that fuel costs are a small part of transit cost: wages, on the other hand, constitute about 80% of operating cost. So assumptions that gas would be the same price - and that VoT and fares would be equivalent - are quite breathtaking. The absence of a range of prices is frankly not good enough.

How much more can go wrong for Gateway? The shipping and trade forecasts were not even done properly - they were just wishful thinking and they have been shown to be overly optimistic. The costs were understated. The benefits exaggerated. The environmental impacts ignored - despite major issues identified, and doubts about methodologies raised by both Health Canada and Environment Canada.

And this government still wants to spend vast sums of money on projects which are not needed, and will not produce the effects claimed for them. As they are supposed to be P3’s, I confidently predict that no private sector corporation will be shouldering any of these risks. Which means the taxpayers will be back on the hook. But at the same time we will also be giving up the possibility that we could have a Livable and Sustainable Region.

Give it up, Gordo

USA Today except it was five days ago and Sgt Turmeric tweeted me and I missed it.

Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state’s busiest highway.

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

And of course many have done and discovered that removing the freeway not only improves the taffic flow, it also improves the way the city works - as Sna Francisco and Seoul and many others can testify.

“Highways don’t belong in cities. Period,” says John Norquist, who was mayor of Milwaukee when it closed a highway. “Europe didn’t do it. America did. And our cities have paid the price.”

Well he is partly right right. Paris went ahead and built both the peripherique around the historic core and new fast roads along the banks of the Seine. It was in one of its tunnels that Princess Diana died. London was going to build a series of motorway rings to link up the radial routes but only the M25 got completed - and later expanded - and it has been jammed since day one and immediately after every expansion. A uproar of protest stopped the inner “motorway box” except for one leg in the east end from Blackwall tunnel to the A11 and a bit of the Westway which connects Marylebone to the A40. But some of the most destructive proposals never got oiff the drawing boards and London is all the better for it. Most German cities have closed their centres to through traffic altogether. You can get across by tram, walk or bike, But if you want to drive you have to go around the long way.

The surge of US interstate building coincided with the worst excesses of “urban renewal” and the “white flight” to the suburbs and it will take a long time for US urban areas to recover, but some have turned around the process, and more want to go that way. Vancouver of course famously fought off the freeway that would have taken out Strathcona and Chinatown and destroyed the waterfront. Only the Georgia Viaduct and a short bit of double decking at Canada Place shows what was intended.

Which makes it all the more puzzling why it is thought a good idea now to widen the freeway through Coquitlam and Burnaby right up the Vancouver’s eastern limit. Are we really still stuck fifty years behind the rest of the world? Urban freeways never delivered what their proponents claimed, and cities that have got rid of them have flourished. It was the fight against Robert Moses and his freeway fantasies that actually started the modern urbanist movement. We know this is not going to work to reduce congestion - and it will spread the problem further. We also know that to get where we need to be for a sustainable future we need more transportation options - indeed even the provincial government now admits that. But it still wants to build the freeway first and says that it will “reduce greenhouse gas emissions since it will cut idling”. Which is a flat lie, and one that has been exposed for some time.

(By the way the Google search on that one three word tag below turned up another 72,300 links)

There are are at two huge failings in the way that the Gateway programs views the future. The first one is its convenient blindness to any realistic assessment of its effect on personal mobility. Basically it is assumed that the number of motorised trips will not change between the with and without project scenarios. And I have written here enough about why that is simply unbelievable.

The second one is the forecast that trade between North America and China will continue to grow at the same rate it was growing up until a couple of years ago when high gas prices and the credit crunch hit the US. At the Livable Blog Nic S notes

Captain Gordon Houston of the new Vancouver Port Authority, which includes all ports in the lower mainland, keeps stressing that we need all this extra capacity. He does not quote any studies to support the expansions and the only business case he makes is that he’s the expert here and we simply need to follow his advice.

What he found was an article in the Sacramento B that describes recent changes in the way international shipping has been responding to a different commercial reality.

Since, apparently, we have no reference documents that we can go to to determine what assumptions were made by the Port or the Gateway Council when it dreamed up this “plan”  we cannot determine if they did what “due diligence” would require. We do know that the province made ludicrous assumptions - and refuses point blank to do any further work, now that the world seems to be unfolding in a way that was not anticipated when these ideas first surfaced.  I am not picking on the province, or the Port, because it seems to have been a common problem. Not so long ago I quoted the head of American Airlines as saying “there was no game plan for $120 a barrel oil”.

What the article cited shows is that expensive fuel, and a shift in economic fortunes between the US and Europe, has already had an impact on container shipping. Europe has been hit much less hard than the US since it gets more dollars for its euros now. I think it is extremely unlikely that anyone at the Port or the MoT looked at gas prices this high when they did their demand forecasts. Indeed as Eric Doherty points out in another Livable Blog article, neither did the US Energy Information Administration - whose forecasts have been consistently wrong and far too optimistic.

We also know that the Vancouver Port is completely unconcerned about Price Rupert, the North West passage opening up decades before anyone expected and the New Panama Canal coming online. Now if a commercial corporation behaved like that you would expect the shareholders to kick up a fuss at the AGM - and probably one of those aggressive investment trusts to start making noises in the boardroom. But our strange not public not private not responsible to anyone but our mates “professional boards” do not have to worry about any oversight. After all it is tax payers money they are spending. Though I fervently hope that at some stage Sheila Fraser takes a long hard look at Transport Canada and how it seems to have shrugged off any responsibility for anything connected to Gateway in any of its multifarious manifestations.

Apart from the pilings now appearing at Deltaport, it is not too late to stop all this. All it takes is for Gordon Campbell and Kevin Falcon to admit that their forecasts were wrong - just like everybody elses. No shame in that.

But if you think they will do that, I have a bridge you can buy.

The following letter has been sent to the Provincial Ombudsman and is being circulated by Donna Passmore. Her comments are attached at the end.

British Columbia Ombudsman

Kim Carter

Dear Kim,

I would like to bring to your attention what we believe is a fundamental unfairness in the Environmental Application process for the South Fraser Perimeter Road.

The E.A. for the S.F.P.R has been conducted with misleading and erroneous information thereby preventing the public and working groups from identifying and commenting on the actual environmental impacts.

The public was given 60 days to read, review, and respond to 3,500 pages of documentation, much of which was false or misleading and the open houses were held in the first two weeks.

People didn’t get much of a chance to review the application documents before bringing their questions to the “experts’ that, for the most part, only directed people back to review the application documents on the website for answers.

The information on the e-PIC webpage is not only difficult to find and navigate, but is incorrect, contradictory, confusing and misleading. In fact several documents that the public were referred to were never posted. Despite many of these discrepancies being pointed out, much of the errata did not get posted on the website as we were told.

We have brought this matter up with the E.A.O. and Environment Minister Penner and have not received a response from either of them. Minister Falcon responded that this is a matter for the Environmental Assessment Office to deal with, but did not comment on the false and misleading statements that have come from his ministry and reports.

The Environmental Assessment Process listed on the E.A.O. webpage states that…

“The assessment process is also needed to ensure that the issues and concerns of the public, First Nations, interested stakeholders and government agencies are considered.

“In general, the environmental assessment includes four main elements:

1. opportunities for all interested parties, including First Nations and neighbouring jurisdictions, to identify issues and provide input;
2. technical studies of the relevant environmental, social, economic, heritage and health effects of the proposed project;
3. identification of ways to prevent or minimize undesirable effects and enhance desirable effects; and
4. consideration of the input of all interested parties in compiling the assessment findings and making recommendations about project acceptability.”

As a fundamental part of that process is the need for the public, First Nations, interested stakeholders, neighbouring jurisdictions and Government Agencies to be commenting on accurate information in the Certificates text and maps or the whole process is in question.

As B.C.s ‘Independent voice for fairness’, we are asking that you investigate this issue for the citizens of British Columbia.

Please review the attached document and represent the citizens of British Columbia by ensuring that a fair environmental process is followed for the SFPR.

Sincerely,

Don Hunt
Sunbury Neighbourhood Association

And Donna added

Good for you for trying but asking the ombudsman’s office to exercise any control over the unethical actions of the Campbell government is akin to asking the Environmental Assessment Office to minimize damage to the environment.

But I suspect you know that and go through the motions anyway on the remote chance that somebody will finally stand up to Campbell while there is any nature, community, fish habitat, air quality, etc. left to protect in the south Fraser.

In that same spirit of persistence, I add the support of the entire Gateway 40 Citizens Network and add to your assertions the absurdity of having an environmental assessment process finalized when the public has not even been given the final route of this proposed road, when we have still not been told how sacred first nations sites will be affected.

And through this “harmonized” environmental assessment process, Gordon Campbell is making the federal government complicit in robbing the public of any expectation of an environmental assessment process with integrity. Shame on Stephen Harper for allowing that to happen, when it has been federal scientists that have blown the whistle on the impending devastation that the South Fraser Perimeter Road will have on the sensitive ecosystems of Boundary Bay.

Donna Passmore

Coordinator

Gateway 40 Citizens Network

I am repeating myself, but I feel it is necessary to point out that the BC EA process was gutted early on in the BC Liberal administration by the then Minister of Deregulation - Kevin Falcon. He clearly has carefully planned  how to get his pet projects built without having to bother about petty details such a public consultation or environmental impact. As was pointed out last night at Delta Council the entire process has been a sham.