Vancouver's Transit Funding Spree

"British Columbia's future suddenly includes $14-billion in new public-transit systems.

The province yesterday unveiled a program of construction that will send new automated SkyTrain transit into the rarefied campus of the University of British Columbia, plant a new light-rail system in the northeastern suburbs of the Lower Mainland and lead to dedicated bus lines in Vancouver, Victoria and the booming Okanagan city of Kelowna.

Premier Gordon Campbell sketched out the largest public-transit announcement in B.C. history yesterday before an audience peppered with Lower Mainland mayors who have been clamouring for various pieces of the program for years.

'You would have to go back more than 40 years to see infrastructure of this magnitude and importance,' said Norman Ruff, a political scientist at the University of Victoria, referring to the big hydro projects of the 1960s."