What Really Happened to Businesses Along the Canada Line
Considering the subject of my thesis was evaluating the consultation process with businesses along the Canada Line (Vancouver’s latest rapid transit system to the airport), I feel the need to weigh in on the recent news about Susan Heyes’ court case (Heyes used to have a business located along the Canada Line construction route). It is a classic case of how a public private partnership can lead to challenges in public consultation when delivering a major infrastructure project.
According to a Vancouver Sun article this weekend, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the $600,000 damage award to Heyes who said her business suffered huge losses during construction of the Canada Line in front of her store.
Heyes said her clothing business on Cambie Street in Vancouver was hurt because the builders of the subway used a more disruptive cut and cover method to install the line below street level, instead of boring a tunnel.
Susan Heyes Photo Credit: Vancouver Sun
How Businesses were Consulted
The story of how the Canada Line project unfolded with local businesses (and unraveled in some cases) reads like a soap opera – complete with secrets, surprising revelations and ultimately, lawsuits.
Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc. (CLCO, the public-private consortium tasked with building the Canada Line) had favoured cut and cover because it was the least expensive, lowest risk and fastest method for the Canada Line. This news came as a surprise to many residents and business owners in Vancouver neighbourhoods including Granville Mall and Cambie Village, where the cut-and-cover construction would occur.
The Canada Line’s Project Definition Report released during its initial public consultation activities had indicated that 90 per cent of the construction would involve bored tunnelling (a less disruptive, more expensive construction method) with only 10 per cent involving cut-and-cover tunnelling. During this time, the CLCO had already delivered a comprehensive public consultation plan (that included a telephone survey, three public workshops, 17 group meetings, four open houses and public feedback received by mail, fax and e-mail).
As the CLCO entered into the confidential bidding selection process in search of a private partner to build the Line, according to Jane Bird, President of the CLCO, construction methodology had never been part of the public debate. The CLCO “didn’t know in Vancouver for a portion whether it would be a trench or a tunnel,” she said. However, she never did specify whether she was aware that cut-and-cover construction was an option prior to the confidential bidding phase, or why the possibility of using this disruptive construction method was not mentioned in the earlier public consultation strategy. According to former Vancouver city councillour Anne Roberts, CLCO had pulled a “bait and switch.”
Following this decision, the CLCO conducted more public consultation activities with businesses at each stage of construction; including establishing a business liaison committee for ongoing feedback during the building phase, even providing it with a $1.5 million marketing budget to encourage customers to “Shop the Line”; however it was too little too late for many.
Cut and cover construction of the Canada Line on Cambie St.
Did the Canada Line consult businesses adequately?
The partners involved in building the Canada Line were criticized for using a public-private partnership to build the line, which ultimately led to secrecy during the bidding process, and shock and frustration when it was announced that significant portions of the Line would be built using cut-and-cover construction.
According to Jane Bird from the CLCO, the secrecy during the bidding process is not unique to public private partnerships, it is the nature of any design-build process where a private company is bidding on a major infrastructure project:
“You’re in a very expensive competitive process where each team is putting together a proposal of how they are going to design and build. Until you at the end of this process and have selected one, you can’t consult on every proposal because otherwise they will just share information and it is not a competition anymore…..Design is part of the competition. What becomes challenging is how do you tell people and consult effectively and do shared decision making on a design that isn’t finished until it’s selected? What you can do is consult on what elements of design people care about and feed that into the design process.”
In the case of the Canada Line, Jane Bird never did specify whether or not the CLCO knew that cut-and-cover construction was a possibility prior to embarking on an extensive public consultation process. She only stated that the CLCO didn’t know “for a portion” whether the Line would be built with bored tunnel or cut-and-cover construction. According to Alan Dever, VP of Government and Community Relations:
“The lesson learned for us is: try and anticipate a broad spectrum of outcomes, communicate that strongly but be realistic in the sense that no one really cares than much until its happening in front of your business.”
Regardless of whether or not businesses cared about the Canada Line until it was in front of their business, the saga of this project illustrates the perils of not paying enough attention to small businesses when building a major infrastructure project through commercial areas.
In the case of the Canada Line, the public consultation process implemented by the CLCO prior to the Canada Line’s construction was extensive and achieved the CLCO’s goal of generating high interest and feedback from local residents and businesses in order to gain input into the preferred project design.
However, there are several aspects of the pre-construction consultation that could have been improved, particularly the quality of information shared with the public. The information provided to the public during this stage was sometimes biased in favour of the project and was misleading, particularly when describing how the line would be built. In spite of the CLCO being constrained by the confidential bidding process, one way this could have been resolved is if the CLCO had clearly communicated the possibility of cut-and-cover construction at the outset of the project and throughout the consultation process.
Another aspect that could have been improved was the level of business involvement. The CLCO knew that the project would be built through predominantly commercial areas full of small businesses. Yet at the time of the pre-construction consultations, only ihigh-level business associations and BIAs were invited to participate in smaller group meetings (perhaps to assure neutrality and focused dialogue). Conflict may have been reduced if the CLCO had opened up these meetings to small business owners along the Line and made a concentrated effort to ensure their participation.
It is also clear that in the early stages, it would have been beneficial to establish the Business Liaison Committee, so that businesses and the CLCO would have an ongoing forum to voice their concerns and solicit feedback on the project. When the Business Liaison Committee was finally formed after the cut-and-cover announcement, it followed a collaborative model and for the most part, was successful. The committee worked diligently to mitigate construction issues and deliver marketing strategies to attract customers to the affected neighbourhoods.
Moving Forward
As Metro Vancouver basks in the afterglow of hosting a successful 2010 Winter Olympics, where the Canada Line and public transit in general were regularly packed with riders, operated smoothly, and were touted as one of the success stories of hosting this major international event, the region already has its sights set on building further major public transportation projects, including additional SkyTrain lines such as the Evergreen Line, which will run from Burnaby to Coquitlam; and a UBC Line, slated to run from Commercial Drive along West Broadway to the University of British Columbia. As the UBC Line entered its first round public consultations in April 2010, businesses along Broadway were already mobilizing to voice their concerns about avoiding the situation experienced by Cambie businesses during Canada Line construction.
Ultimately, the Canada Line example has proven that in moving forward with any major urban transportation project where disruption is anticipated within a specific community, it is fundamental to engage and consult adversely affected parties early and often and to provide clear, transparent information on the full scope of the project, including all possible methods of delivery and construction.
Governments will continue to pursue public private partnerships to delivery major infrastructure projects. It appears that the CLCO had good intentions when designing the comprehensive public consultation strategy on the Canada Line; however in a public private partnership model, they did not have full control over the project scope and its construction. As a result, their consultation strategy was impacted by their inability to predict the actions of their private-sector partner and as a result, the reactions of the general public. Understanding and communicating the reality of this uncertainty should be factored into any public consultation strategy for a public private partnership.
