We Built This City on Boosterism

As the first concrete tunneling form along Cambie Street has been poured, marking the start of the controversial cut and cover construction of the RAV Line, it is an ideal time to look at the parallels between the development of early Vancouver and it's current Olympic boom.

A recent article in The Courier highlighted the importance of a "syndicate of gentleman" in determining the east/west bilateral pattern of development which exists to this day. A couple of Google searches later, and I discover a remarkable parallel to the RAV Line: the BCER Interurban Line. It turns out that syndicate member and mayor David Oppenhiemer was a major player in its construction, and a major landowner along its line. Indeed Oppennheimer, president of the Vancouver Improvement Company whose members included Israel Wood Powell, John Robson, John Andrew Mara, and Francis Barnard owned most of the land to the east of False Creek purchased from the Hastings Sawmill Company. Mayor Oppenheimer successfully lured investors to the new CPR terminus by building much of the early infrastructure and amenities. He participated in various developmental schemed throughout BC and in 1887 he was elected the first president of the Vancouver Board of Trade. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography bluntly states that "these activities, which enhanced the value of his own real estate holdings, were so intertwined that it is frequently impossible to separate his interests as a municipal politician and as an investor and entrepreneur". Critics of the time called Oppenheimer's ventures utopic and that they scattered the population. Sound familiar?

As Mayor, Larry Campbell was responsible for the decision to use Cambie as the route of the RAV Line despite the existence of an already graded right of way down the Arbutus Corridor. Rafe Mair in The Tyee contends that because the Arbutus Corridor was in Liberal MP and Cabinet minister Stephen Owen's riding, he would have lost his seat. Campbell's persuasion landed him a comfy senate position. Of course, the gentry have already settled along the Arbutus line, from when Oppenhiemer's interurban made its way through Marpole to Steveston. But the Cambie route still has loads of development potential, just ask Concert Properties, a member of Canada's largest and most powerful P3 lobby groups, the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships and donor of more than $16,000 to the Liberal Party of British Columbia last year.

Concert Properties was formed by Jack Poole from the Vancouver Land Corporation, which is oddly akin to the Vancouver Improvement Company, when then-mayor Gordon Campbell granted access to $48 million worth of public land, in exchange for the construction of 2,000 units of 'affordable housing' each year. But they only ever built 1,143 units, total. Will Offley points out, "the P3 and Liberal convergences don't end there. Jack Poole, David Podmore, Ken Georgetti and Tony Tennessy were all members of the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Olympic Bid Committee." Tony Tennessy has served on both the Concert board as well as the aforementioned Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, of which the winning bidder SNC Lavalin is a member. The Straight reported that Jack Poole wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell claiming that the proposed transit link "has always been viewed as a valuable tool in the campaign to win the right to host the 2010 Winter Games." Although written on 2010 stationary, it could have easily been written on a Concert Properties letterhead, as they had initially joined with Borealis Capital Corp. in a bid to develop the RAV project.

Surely, if investors had arrived from Victoria, Winnipeg, and London in 1884 to the seedy mill town of Granville and the CPR had never arrived, there'd have been hell to pay. Likewise, when the world comes in 2010, we had better live up to our image. This is where RAV comes in handy. The chosen route down Granville Street conveniently enables planners to finish off the gentrification of a once diverse and edgy boulevard. First was Pacific Centre and he suburbanization of urban public space. Then it was Expo and the legacy of Yaletown, a developer's wet dream. Now with Future Shop and Winners residing at one corner of Robson and Granville, and Sears on the other, a Chapters a block away, a Costco coming soon near Stadium Station, big boxes Best Buy and Canadian Tire further down the RAV Line across the Cambie Street Bridge, and the process is coming to finalization. The city has proposed re-introducing cars onto the street to satisfy business owners, or shall I say big business owners. Reed Eurchuk wrote last year in The Republic:

"For these institutions the ideal city inhabitant is a well-paid professional caught forever on the hamster wheel of working and spending. In Vancouver, successive city governments-the current one is an ideal model-have organized and facilitated the accumulation of capital largely by socializing the costs of debt projects like the RAV line, the Convention Centre and the Olympics, while at the same time co-ordinating new mega-development projects. These long-term capital investments benefit property owners and large businesses, and are paid for disproportionately by the average citizen. "Socialize debt, privatize profit" is the cry of modern capitalism. The public investments and private developments raise the value of property, which in turn raises the cost of housing. Rising housing costs effectively remove blue collar workers, most of the elderly, refugees, poor people, single parents, artists, musicians and students from the area. The ultimate outcome of this vision is urban homogeneity and suburbanization."

The BCER dissuaded the city from taking control of the Tramway in 1909 by acquiring long-term licenses with suburban communities (Point Grey, South Vancouver) to make it prohibitively expensive to either lay their own tacks, or lease them from the BCER. After all, the board of directors, based in London, had to recoup their investment. Then again, they could always raise fares. In 1913 mayor Baxter doubted the accuracy of the company's figures and wanted a city auditor to go through the books. He thought it unfair that Vancouver citizens should suffer arbitrary fare increases because the company was in financial difficulties due to over expansion. Um, can anyone say Millennium Line?

But the same worries have been expressed concerning the RAV Line. A new Danish study of 27 rail-based transit projects in 14 countries found nine of 10 projects had inflated passenger forecasts and that on average, in actual operation the projects fell more than 50-per-cent short of projected ridership. Burnaby Mayor Derrick Corrigan and other critics have argued that projections for the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver line of 100,000 passengers per day by 2010 are also inflated. At $3 per ticket, a 50-per-cent ridership shortfall on the line would cost $150,000 a day in revenue or nearly $55 million a year. TransLink is required to make up 90 per cent of revenue shortfall in such an event, and builder-operator SNC-Lavalin and its partners are responsible for the other 10 per cent.

Back in 1919 there weren't any inflated estimates because there wasn't actually a ridership. Francis Edmonds owned most of Mount Pleasant, so in order to increase the value of his property, he invested in the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Company, formed in 1891 by several local businessmen, including Mayor David Oppenheimer and built it right through his land. This lack of public input, although due to a lack of a public, is something today's governments have learned well. Today, key aspects of public-private partnerships remain shielded from view on the grounds that openness would jeopardize the competitive bidding processes that are intended to ensure the taxpayer gets value for money. Of course, if you can save some money by switching to a cut and cover when you told the public it would be a bored tunnel.

The Expo line followed the interurban line, why can't the RAV line? According to Richmond Mayor Malcom Brodie the city expects to add 21,000 new people and 9,000 new housing units by 2021. Who will be doing this development? What have we learned? When the interurban line went belly up, so did the Downtown Eastside. Will it happen again?

For more on the RAV line, see Do RAV right, and The Livable Region. For more on the interurban see the Coast Mountain Bus Company.

Thank you to Lynda Orr.