Before the B.C. election campaign officially began April 11, announcements to lure voters had been occurring for months.
But one funding announcement — or re-announcement — didn’t happen. Instead of pledging for a third time a $7-million commitment toward restarting the E&N passenger railway from Victoria to Courtenay, Transportation Minister Todd Stone announced in March the government would pull together a working group to complete a business case for commuter rail on the E&N corridor between Vic West and Langford.
The Island Corridor Foundation owns the rail line and has been working since 2011 to resume rail service. No business plan has yet been produced.
Anticlimactic and subdued compared to the earlier pledges, the March announcement encompasses a smaller goal and smaller project scope.
For those awaiting a regular, reliable alternative to commuter gridlock along the Trans-Canada Highway, it capped six years of repeatedly raised and frustrated hopes.
The E&N offered daily passenger service between Victoria and Courtenay until 2011, when the condition of the track was deemed unsafe. At that time, the B.C. government pledged $7.5 million to getting the line running again. One condition to the funding required obtaining at least matching funds from the federal government. The B.C. commitment was renewed in July 2015, and it seemed then the feds would pony up. The 2015 federal election sidelined that opening, and now here we are.
Railway-track upgrading and maintenance are costly. Estimates elsewhere in the world peg costs at about $3 million per kilometre. One B.C. source, who had worked for CP, CN and B.C. Rail, told me just fixing the railbed and replacing the rotting ties would likely cost at least $1 million per kilometre, and reconditioning trestles and bridges would add significantly more.
With about 200 kilometres of track between Victoria and Courtenay, an overhaul to meet safety standards would take far more than the province’s promised amount and matching federal funds. Limiting the project’s scope, at least for the time being, brings cost projections down.
Yet, just one day before the province’s 2015 affirmation of E&N funding, both governments announced $85 million for the McKenzie interchange.
For many years, the McKenzie Avenue/Trans-Canada Highway intersection has bottlenecked traffic travelling into and out of Victoria. More than 80,000 vehicles pass through the intersection, on average, every day. Between 3 and 6:30 p.m., most weekdays, most of those vehicles reach the intersection only after crawling along in traffic for at least 20 minutes.
As experts considered the issues and possible solutions, some analysts pointed out that fixing the intersection wouldn’t improve the commute appreciably. A new interchange without lights and longer on-ramps would just shift gridlock farther along the highway — especially as traffic volume increases in coming years.
Analysts suggested the only real fix was to get people out of their cars and into public transit.
But the buses bringing people in from the western communities face the same issues as the other tens of thousands of vehicles competing for the same, limited highway space.
It appears the solution lies in some form of public transit that travels quickly, reliably and frequently, back and forth between Victoria and the western communities, stops at high-use urban transfer points, has either right of way at road-grade intersections or passes above them, and avoids the highway altogether. In other words, a type of dedicated two-way transit route between Victoria and the West Shore.
Late last year, Victoria agreed to look at the viability of a commuter train along the E&N corridor, and developer Ken Mariash also proposed commuter service on the line from Langford to Vic West. Mariash estimated capital costs at $10 million, with subsidies needed for annual operating costs not covered by fares. Even with the higher $1-million- to $3-million-per-kilometre upgrade estimates, fixing the 12 kilometres of Vic West-Langford track and subsidizing the rail service would be a bargain compared to the McKenzie interchange’s costs.
The business plan for the interchange, however, was prepared and on the burner ready to go when governments came looking for ways to spend infrastructure money. We’re still waiting for a plan — any plan — for any length of the E&N line.
