When I asked mayoral candidate Dan Vandal to provide me with a cost-benefit analysis to justify plans to build a rapid transit system for Winnipeg, he handed me a copy of a one-page e-mail written by Winnipeg Transit boss Rick Borland.
"That's the cost-benefit analysis?" I asked yesterday, during a Winnipeg Sun editorial board meeting.
No, it's where to find it, Vandal replied.
What Vandal handed me was the website for a two-year-old Transport Canada study on rapid transit, which I've already seen.
In it, there are three pages of a so-called case study of a proposed southwest transit corridor for Winnipeg. It's known as Phase One of former mayor Glen Murray's rapid transit plan.
"The benefits are more than two to one over the period of ten years," Vandal said.
Actually, the three-page summary contains no detailed breakdown of the costs of the project, including land expropriation, the building of underpasses and overpasses.
There is no breakdown of operation costs, the price of the buses in question, or the cost of moving rail lines to allow for a dedicated roadway.
a cost-benefit analysis for something of this magnitude — at last $51 million for the first half of the first leg of this project — would take dozens of pages of analysis.
Three pages? This is the basis upon which Vandal is going to proceed with this extraordinarily expensive project?
"We know that we need to build a transit system for the next 25 years," said Vandal. "We have one now where we don't have the ridership that we would like."
It's a system that's been successful in citis such as Edmonton and Calgary, said Vandal — the only main candidate in the race supporting rapid transit (Sam Katz, Al Golden, MaryAnn Mihychuk and Garth Steek are all opposed).
Actually, Edmonton and Calgary don't have bus rapid transit. They have light rail and buses. No matter.
"The principle of rapid transit, whether it's rail or whether it's bus, is similar," said Vandal.
"There are different modalities and technologies, but rapid transit is the principle to get people from destination A to point B fast."
You see, therein lies the problem with Vandal as mayor. He thinks like Glen Murray.
Who cares about doing your homework to see if there is a net benefit to spending tens of millions of dollars on a rapid transit system. We just need rapid transit.
Right. It's the same with the restaurant space and toilet on the dink bridge.
I asked Vandal how the city came to the decision to build a 4,000-square-foot space for a restaurant, including heated sewer and water hook-up for a toilet.
Was there a business plan?
Where's the analysis to determine whether this is viable?
Well, it started as a creperie and it grew to a full-scale restaurant, Vandal explained.
And yes, there was some analysis by some consulting firm, but he didn't remember the name of the company. Hmm.
"We're going through a tough time right now (with that space)," Vandal admitted. "The negative attention certainly is not helping."
You expected positive attention?
You went from a creparie to a crapperie on a bridge nobody did their homework on it?
Meanwhile, our roads and sewer pipes are falling apart?
Good grief.
We need less of that kind of decision making at City Hall, and a hell of a lot more common sense.
And Vandal just doesn't have it.