The rush to construct rapid transit in Vancouver will occupy the courts long after the Olympics wind down. It was inevitable that once Susan Heyes was awarded $600,000 for her losses, incurred when the Canada line was constructed by cut and cover instead of by tunnel, other merchants would seek similar compensation. Now, in Gautam v. Canada Line Rapid Transit, the BC Supreme Court has authorized 216 merchants and 67 property owners to bring a class action against Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc., Intransit BC Limited Partnership, Intransit British Columbia G.P. Ltd. and SNC-Lavalin Inc.
As documented in the Heyes litigation, now under appeal, the transit builders switched from tunneling to cut and cover when the cost of tunneling ballooned, an additional cost that federal and provincial funders refused to cover. Exacerbated by the poor soil conditions, cut and cover caused significant disruption to neighborhood businesses for far longer than had been predicted in the environmental assessment. None of this, of course, is unusual. What is unusual is that Ms. Hayes was awarded $600,000 for nuisance, in the absence of any evidence that they transit builders had been negligent, and even though cut and cover had been specifically approved through a federal and provincial environmental assessment.
While I sympathize with the losses of the Cambie Village merchants, I am very concerned about the impact of the class action on the future development of transit in Canada. Everyone suffers from the absence of adequate transit in our urban areas, but the courts can rarely do anything about government inaction. If we make it even more difficult and expensive to build transit, we will have less of it, resulting in more gridlock, more pollution and a poorer economy for all. Governments across the country have already passed laws blocking lawsuits in nuisance against municipalities for sewer and water overflows; perhaps it is time to expand those laws to cover the construction of transit.
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Sorry, but you make a grave error, when subways are built, especially cut-and-cover subway construction, the conventional practice is to offer compensation to affected merchants if they can prove a financial loss. This is one reason why cut-and-cover subway construction is avoided at all costs by knowledgeable contractors.
Even when Nottingham built its new LRT line, merchants adjacent to the new line would be compensated if track construction remained in front of their shop for more than two weeks.
Offering compensation, compels contractors to finish their work quickly and as trouble free as possible.
I agree that it would have been fair and appropriate to build reasonable compensation for affected neighbours into the budget, in advance, where the federal government should have paid its share.
Best wishes
> The example I mentioned, barring claims in nuisance against municipalities for sewer and water backups
The flaw in this comparison is that sewer and water backups are inadvertent and, hence, acts of God. In the same way if lightning strikes your property, without insurance, the private owner is responsible. I'd like to hear the precedence set when NEW sewer and water lines are added and there is significant disruption to adjacent businesses/properties (significant meaning greater than TWO years worth of disruption).
But we must remember the real reason for C&C subway construction, the cost of the RAV/Canada Line was escalating wildly out of control and to curb construction costs, C&C subway construction was substitutes, with only SNC Lavalin in the know.
What we got for $2.5 billion (and counting) is a pygmy subway line which cost over three times as much to build as a comparable LRT line and which would have carried more customers.
Cost to retro fit the RAV/Canada Line to bring it yp to LRT standard, $1 billion to $2 billion. Now which has a more detrimental impact on public transit, an over built subway costing billions or a just as efficient LRT costing much less.
Susan Heyes lawsuit has no bearing on 'rapid transit' construction; building with metro does!
Thanks for your insight. As a vancouver resident, I also worry about what this will do to vancouver's other planned expansions of its transit lines. IIRC, the appeal should be decided soon.
Of note, a post grad study from Minnisota showed that compensations packages from LRT construction in the USA had mixed results at best and were no guarantee of a business going out of business.
http://nexus.umn.edu/Theses/ReubenCollins_Profess…
>no guarantee of a business going out of business
Of course not. No one said "not going out of business" is a precondition for compensation, just as the prerequisite for legal medication isn't that it guarantee not dying. Failure is the natural course of businesses in free market societies. However, the compensation can HELP businesses to survive the short-term losses in revenue while the major disruptive activity is occurring.