The NDP government is taking some heat over stopping a study many hoped would finally result in commuter rail service on the old E & N rail corridor, between the West Shore and Victoria.
Former Transportation Minister, Todd Stone, issued a request for proposals with expectations of a report at the end of July. But Transportation Minister Claire Trevena says what the previous government did was short-sighted and aimed at trying to win brownie points ahead of the election.
While some are criticizing the decisions as yet another delay, Trevena disagrees:
"There is no delay. The previous government decided to have a review just before the last election after 16 years of doing nothing in the corridor. We looked at what was happening, it was announced just before the election, as I say. So when I became minister I looked at that, realized it hadn't been included, had not included First Nations. We want to make sure we're dealing with this thoroughly."
Trevena -- the MLA for the North Island -- says her government wants to take a broader look at the entire E & N corridor, and conduct more consultation with First Nations before moving forward.
" So what we want to do is make sure we get something viable to the E & N, including participation of all the stakeholders, and First Nations were not really involved in the previous consultation. We want to make sure they are involved. And we want to make sure that we can deal with the while area of the south island. We've got a lot of roads, and we've got a lot of work to do."
Trevena says all of the mayors are on board with the NDP direction. But Barb Desjardins says we have a region in crisis as far as transportation is concerned, and it's time to get on with it:
" I'm very disappointed to hear that they're going to put this on a shelf. There have been lots of studies. We moved this forward significantly with the help of Ken Mariash and the businesses down at Bayview. And we had BC Transit at the table for the first time, BC Government at the table, all of the mayors at the table. We had a process going forward to have the consultation with First nations. What more do we need to do?"
Desjardins says all the preliminary work has been done, and things were at the stage where a request for proposals was ready to go out. She fears the data will become obsolete, and we'll once again be left with an empty corridor.