Quote:
Originally Posted by FacePaint
Price increase was completely the fault of delays caused by the Province. So when you say you're on the side of the Province are you on the side that paused construction for review, then agreed with tunneling. Or the side of the Province that paused construction again for review and forced through a new, crappy plan?
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Nobody hates the UCP more than me, but I think subsequent events have shown that the impact from the pause is overblown. They finally got the green light in July 2021 and it took them 3 years to get to the Lynnwood stub announcement. So I think it's pretty reasonable to conclude that they were not actually on the cusp of going to tender in late 2020 when the pause hit and that they were going to run into the inflation/supply chain problems either way.
Let's also remember where the world was in 2020 and 2021...productivity wasn't exactly awesome as the world was adapting, so it's not like we lost really high yield time. But also it's not like the green line team couldn't do any work during this period; particularly SE of the Elbow River, but the extra due diligence would also have meant more clarity and
some progress towards the tunnel if/when the green light came. So why did it take 36 more months to see anything resembling progress?
I want to say that the pause was stupid - and it almost certainly happened for the wrong reasons - but it looks like it was a broken clock moment for the UCP. I suspect the city's entrenchment at this point made it awfully hard for them to admit/acknowledge they were wrong (who hasn't been there in an argument with a spouse or whatever)...even to the point of opting for the Lynnwood stub despite the many many problems that would have created (not to mention completely undermining a bunch of arguments they used to justify going SE, like the MSF location).
And it's not a crappy plan. Without even factoring capital costs or timelines I actually think elevated is the superior option because it will be less harmful to PIP, delivers many riders to their destination level instead of 3+ stories below, and has better OPEX.