It came with little fanfare, just a news release that elicited the “oh yeah, whatever happened to this idea?” response.
I’m referring to the Thursday announcement, quietly and out of the blue, that the proposed fixed link to the Sunshine Coast was officially dead. As in, gone. Off the table. Sayonara.
And that oh-by-the-way form of announcement was befitting for an idea that few seemed to take seriously. The fixed-link idea had always appeared to be a back of the envelope kind of thing anyways, a gimmick dreamt up by the former B.C. Liberal government.
Not only would the project be prohibitively expensive (about $2.1 to $4.4 billion, according to a consultant’s study released yesterday) but it would have involved building a road and bridges over very inhospitable terrain and deep water channels.
But there’s another reason why the NDP killed the project: the new government has far more pressing priorities when it comes to spending gobs of cash on expensive projects.
For example, it needs to spend more than $2 billion over the next three years to maintain, replace, renovate or expand K-12 schools across the province. That figure will likely turn out to be higher when the NDP government presents its first budget in February, as the party campaigned on taking a more aggressive approach in building schools and getting rid of portables.
Another $2.6 billion has been earmarked for post-secondary institutions, plus $3.1 billion (again, over three years) for new health facilities and equipment, and a staggering $4.6 billion for transportation projects (highway rehabilitation alone will cost almost $700 million).
Finally, the government is committed to creating a heck of a lot of new housing units and substantially increasing the number of child care spaces, which has to happen if the NDP ever hopes to implement its promised $10-a-day child care promise.
And the list of capital spending goes on: billions of dollars spent by B.C. to maintain and replace an aging electrical infrastructure, and other expensive projects just over the horizon, such as the proposed Broadway subway line and perhaps Surrey light rail transit.
There’s no way an NDP government would have ever considered putting the building of an expensive highway to a paradise for retirees and cottagers over building schools, health facilities and transit.
A fixed link? It was never in the cards for this NDP government and probably would have ultimately been rejected by the B.C. Liberals had they retained power.
The fix was in from the start.
WATCH: Thu, Apr 14: B.C. transportation officials are studying whether it would be feasible to replace both ferry crossings with a fixed connector to the Sunshine Coast. But as Ted Chernecki reports, it’s a very divisive issue.
Comments