Centre for Civic Governance

 The new, $2-billion Canada Line will lose between $14 million and $21 million per year until 2025.

That's despite the fact the line is rapidly approaching the 100,000 riders per day on which the project was based.

The information was contained in a report by provincial comptroller-general Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland concerning TransLink and B.C. Ferries, which was released last week.

While the report chided TransLink and the mayors' council for not addressing the Lower Mainland transportation authority's funding shortfall sooner, it acknowledged that TransLink was burdened with services where costs will be much higher than revenue for a long time.

"For example, the cost of operating the Canada Line [net of bus-fleet operating efficiencies] is expected to exceed the additional system revenue it generates until 2025, with costs exceeding incremental revenues by $14 million to $21 million for most years until then," wrote Wenezenki-Yolland.

TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said the costs are partially the result of how the public-private partnership deal was structured to pay off more than $700 million put into the project by builder InTransitB.C.

"It costs less to pay more up front," said Hardie. "It's like paying off your mortgage earlier." New Democratic Party transportation critic Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton) blamed the decision to build the Canada Line as a public-private partnership on the government's "ideological" support of P3s.

Bains said the Canada Line deal is one of the reasons for TransLink's ongoing need to raise more revenue, as pointed out in the comptroller-general's report.

"It's a sad situation," said Bains. "I hope the government pays attention." Figures provided by TransLink for the period from Sept. 9 to Oct. 6 show average daily ridership of 83,027.

Hardie said "the ridership to date is a very positive development." But he said it was "too early" to say how many of those riders are new to transit or how many cars were taken off the road as the result of the transit megaproject.

Back in March, Premier Gordon Campbell said: "This project is the equivalent of investing in a new 10-lane road between downtown Vancouver and Richmond. It will take 200,000 one-way trips off the streets." However, the best Trans-Link could do to back that up was provide feedback from its customer-service polling of 200 adult Canada Line riders, who were more positive overall than other transit users.

The indication is that the line is attracting more car drivers because 79 per cent have access to a private vehicle for the trip compared with 66 per cent of riders overall. Three in 10, or 29 per cent, were not regular users of transit.