Briefly: The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain’s price tag jumped from $4 billion to $6 billion and one of its station builders is in a legal fight with Metro Vancouver over the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke said the delay to 2029 is “over the top.” The project should have been finished by 2025.
Langley Township Mayor Eric Woodward says Premier David Eby applies a double-standard to megaprojects. READ MORE BELOW.
Bob Mackin
Spanish headquartered Acciona, fired from the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in 2022, is part of a consortium hired to build eight stations on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension.
Spain’s Acciona dominates B.C. megaprojects
The B.C. NDP government also announced Aug. 15 that the SkyTrain project’s cost ballooned by 50% to $6 billion and would be finished a year later, in 2029. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Rob Fleming blamed materials and labour cost inflation and supply chain pressures for the increase, but his ministry has not released the details under freedom of information. The first, King George to Fleetwood phase of the project was originally planned for late 2025 completion with a $1.63 billion budget.
“We don’t like the fact that it’s significantly higher and the costs are higher, but, my goodness, this delay is just way over the top,” said Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke. “The city did everything it had to do, the city has spent over $12 million just widening Fraser Highway, doing all the prep work, all of our prep work is done. We’re ready, but we haven’t even seen a shovel in the ground.”
Acciona, part of the South Fraser Station Partners with Aecon and Pomerleau, is also working on the new $1.4 billion Pattullo Bridge, which won’t be complete until 2025, and the $2.83 billion Broadway Subway, which was delayed to 2027. When the province revealed those project delays in May, it did not update the costs.
The leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. called the Surrey-Langley cost escalation “an absolute disgrace.”
“The NDP has failed our province on every front—from affordability to accountability,” said John Rustad in a news release.
Acciona was the original builder of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, but is now embroiled in a legal battle with Metro Vancouver. In March, the regional government revealed that the North Vancouver megaproject would cost almost $4 billion for new builder PCL to complete by 2030.
It was originally pegged at $700 million with a 2020 target.
Eric Woodward, the Mayor of the Township of Langley and a Metro Vancouver director, said the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain procurement is proof of a double-standard in NDP Premier David Eby’s government.
“Acciona has been chosen by the province to build a significant portion of this project, while they’re demanding an independent audit of Metro Vancouver,” Woodward said in an interview. “Where’s the premier’s office’s call for an independent audit on this project? So it seems that it’s okay for his projects to go over budget by $2 billion, but projects by Metro Vancouver, using the exact same contractor, must be independently audited. I’m curious on the logic of that.”
AtkinsRealis, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin, was chosen to design and build systems snd track work for the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain, somewhat of a comeback for the Montreal-based firm. Due to its history of corruption, SNC-Lavalin withdrew bids for major transportation projects in July 2019. Acciona was the main beneficiary of that decision.
Langley township mayor Eric Woodward (right) and Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke (left). Woodward/X
Prior to becoming Attorney General in 2017, infrastructure costs and delivery were on Eby’s mind. He even slammed the previous BC Liberal government for cost overruns on megaprojects and what he called a “lax approach” to white collar crime and arranged for a key chapter in the Charbonneau Commission on Quebec construction corruption to be translated to English.
A top recommendation from that public inquiry was to “create a provincial public procurement authority mandated to: monitor public contracts to identify malfeasance; support public contracting authorities in managing contracts; intervene with public contracting authorities when necessary.”
Woodward also questions the NDP government’s fast-tracking the removal of land from the agricultural land reserve (ALR) in order to build an operations and maintenance centre for the new SkyTrain line.
The ALR was an NDP innovation during Premier Dave Barrett’s 1972 to 1975 administration. “Farming is encouraged and non-agricultural uses are restricted,” said the ALR web page.
A Dec. 11, 2023 NDP cabinet order, signed by Surrey-Green Timbers MLA Rachna Singh, took a nearly 37-acre parcel of land at 176th and the Fraser Highway out of the ALR on which to build the $1 billion operations and maintenance centre for TransLink.
B.C. Assessment Authority valued the land at $5.65 million in July 2023. It was sold for $8.052 million last November.
“I have talked to this government about allowing school playgrounds to be on ALR, just like we allow golf courses and other things to be an ALR,” Locke said. “[They say] absolutely not, and yet we’re putting heavy industrial projects on ALR. That was a surprise to me as well.”
Woodward said many private property owners would like to develop non-farmable land within the urban containment boundary, especially out in Aldergrove.
“We find it very interesting that the province doesn’t follow their own rules,” Woodward said.
“I would love to build a new police station on ALR land, or put a maintenance yard on ALR land and save my taxpayers $50 million, but that’s not an option for me. Apparently it’s only an option for Minister [Rob] Fleming.”
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