~ *

for buns’

As union member Harry Kin-
negan looks on, Bakery
Workers’ Hans Bayer offers
buns to Vancouver parks
board chairman Doug Mowat
(1) for two cents — the dif-
ference between the price for
buns purchased in the U.S.
and those made in this pro-
vince. The union staged the
event Monday to highlight
their continuing campaign to
compel MacDonald's to buy
buns in Canada, since it was
the park board’s action two
years ago in moving its con-
tract to a U.S. bakery that
began the exodus of bun con-
tracts — and jobs — from
Canadian bakeries. The union
_ is also pressing for election of
COPE members to the board
as the contract for
comes up for
January.

\
\
\
\ : :

‘Two cents |

buns |
tender in

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

$1 billion ALRT can still be replaced

By DAN KEETON
ALRT — stop it now or facea
whopping bill of $1 billion or more
that will gouge you for the next 30
years.
_ So say the critics — and they are
ANcreasing — of the Social Credit
g0vernment’s transit showpiece,
the Advanced Light Rapid Transit
System, to Lower Mainland tax-
Dayers.
_ In its place, put a conventional
light rail system of the kind that is

~ Used in over 200 cities around the

World. It’s proven technology and
Is relatively cheap, say aldermen
Tesponsible for transit in the

Teater Vancouver Regional

istrict, the transit workers union
and a host of community groups
and individuals.

Many citizens had never ac-
Cepted the space-age technology
forced onto the region by then
Municipal affairs minister Bill

ander Zalm over bacon and eggs
at the Bayshore Inn two years ago.

ded together in the Citizens for
apid Transit organization, they
COnsistently fought for a rapid
transit system to hook up the

OWer Mainland’s widespread
Communities years before the

reds in Victoria finally moved
On the issue,

But, like Harry Rankin and
Bruce Yorke, the Vancouver

dermen who sit on the GVRD
transit committee, CFRT people
Saw another Socred mega-project
M the driverless intermediate

_ “Apacity trains that have never seen

Service anywhere but on the test
track in Kingston, Ontario,
Ow more people are having
qualms over the system which had
ou accepted with little opposition
ack in December, 1980. The other
€mbers of the transit committee
Were given a jolt last month when
€ir chairman, Surrey alderman

~00 Bose, announced a privately-
“ommissioned study showing the
St of the system to be an
astronomical $16 per ride. That’s
~duse, said Bose, of a $1 billion
Nee tag, most of which will be
Paid for the region’s homeowners.
be RT’s Socred backers had
at ae the final cost of the project
ing 18 million —a figure that had
it Aten considerably from the in-
of $650 million tossed out a little
. Ta year ago. But they neglected
Mention that the final costs
®uld include amortization

charges on the $600 million bor-
rowed to finance the transit
showpiece.

That burden, 57 percent of
which must be collected by the
GVRD through the fare box and
surcharges on Hydro bills and pro-
perty taxes, will eat into other pro-
grams such as health care, educa-
tion, parks and libraries, said Bose
when he tabled the report based on
his study at the transit committee
meeting of Nov. 9.

And the cost of ALRT is likely
responsible for the scissors that are
being applied to the region’s ex-
isting transit system, cutting bus
routes and hundreds of transit jobs
in the near future, said the In-
dependent Canadian Transit
Union, which called a public
meeting on the issue last Sunday.

One of several local politicians
present, Bose told the approx-
imately 250 people attending that
‘the people who push this system
are trying to justify a project on the
basis of capacities that are not
substantiated.” :

It was clear reference to project
chairman and Socred MLA Jack
Davis’ claims of an annual rider-
ship of 30 million a year —a wildly
exaggerated figure for aregion with
just over one million people, .the
critics charge. 2

Bose commissioned the study,
carried out by former transit com-
mittee consultant Doug Spaeth
after B.C. Transit project ad-
ministrator Mike O’Connor refus-
ed to appear before the GVRD
transit committee to discuss the
progress and costs of ALRT last
July.

“The simplest reading of the
facts available would appear to 1n-

*dicate that ALRT will be an im-
pediment rather than an actual.
asset in terms of improving on the.
current transit system performance:
in the region,”’ Bose wrote in his:
preamble to the report. It provided:
tables comparing the cost, and.
several related factors, among the;
existing conventional systems in:
Edmonton, Calgary and San
Diego, California, and the planned.
systems in Portland (conventional)
and Vancouver.

Capital costs ranged from a low
of $4.7 million per kilometre, in
San Diego’s case, to an estimated
high, depending on how interest
rates work out, of between $33 and
$35 million per kilometre for Van-

BOB BOSE transit chair-
man hits ALRT costs.

couver’s ALRT, in Canadian 1982
dollars.

A particularly stunning com-

parison showed that the GVRD
cost at completion was three times
that of Portland’s estimated cost,
in 1986 Canadian dollars.
Portland’s line is to be 25
kilometres in length, while the
Greater Vancouver region’s line —
initially to run from downtown
Vancouver to Surrey, with a
branch to the Lougheed Mall — is
20 kilometres, and terminates in
New Westminster.

“Tt will service only about 12
percent of the GVRD’s transit
needs,”’ said Vancouver alderman
Yorke at Sunday’s meeting. He
said the purchase of the system,
rammed through by the provincial
government despite extensive com-
parison studies already completed
by the GVRD, was simply to ‘‘pay
a political debt to the Ontario
government.”’

Yorke also cited the ALRT
system’s inflexibility. Unlike the
conventional lines in Calgary, Ed-
monton, and San Diego which are
adaptable to parts from a variety of
manufacturers, the ALRT ‘‘locks
in’ buyers since it will take parts
suited only to that particular
system — all distributed by
ALRT’s producers, the Ontario
government’s Urban Transit
Development Corporation.

The crunch will really come
when ALRT is in operation, the
transit critics warn. The provincial
government plans to foist the same
agreement onto the GVRD as exists
for the current transit system,
whereby the region pays 35 percent
of the operating deficit from fares.

The region must make up the dif-
ference if fares fail to constitute 35
percent and the region’s taxpayers
are also hit with one-third of the re-
maining 65 percent. Bose has
predicted that a low ridership will
contribute only about six percent
through fares.

ALRT?’s defenders — they in-
clude Davis and Vancouver alder-
man May Brown, also present at
the transit union’s meeting — push
the system as the wave of the future
(it’s like comparing a jet plane with
a propellor driven one, said Davis)
and cite the $60 million grant from
the federal government as justifica-
tion for the project.

But critics point out that the
federal government was never ask-
ed if it would financially support a
conventional line. And on the sub-
ject of financing, Vancouver
mayor Michael Harcourt told the
250 people who attended that
securing the $600 million loan was
the wrong way to finance the tran-
sit system.

“It should be paid out general
revenues, the same as bridges and
highways,”’ said the mayor, who
said he had been against the ALRT
project from the start.

ICTU president Colin Kelly ask-
ed, at the beginning of the meeting,
why the Social Credit government
has forced a costly system onto
citizens who already face a
decimated transit system under
the government’s endless cutbacks.

The conclusion ALRT critics
have drawn is that the automated,
elevated new technology is the
Socreds’ showpiece for another
megaproject — Expo ‘86, which
will have transportation as its
theme.

The fears raised by Bose have at
least roused the-transit committee
members, many of whom rolled
over and played dead when Vander
Zalm imposed ALRT at the
breakfast meeting. They agreed the
GVRD should carry out a ‘more
detailed study of comparative
costs, and have the report ready by
Jan. 31.

According to the critics, in-
cluding Bose, scrapping the project
and replacing it with a conventional
line would not be as costly to tax-
payers as ALRT will be if it is com-
pleted.

“Getting out now would be a
bargain,” the transit committee
chairman said. ~

Local 40
dispute
lingers

Resolution of the contentious
dispute involving international
trusteeship of Local 40 of the
Hotel, Restaurant Culinary
Workers and Bartenders Union
appears little closer for the labor
movement despite the appointment
by the B.C. Federation of Labor of
former IWA leader Syd Thompson
as ‘‘ombudsman’’ for the local and
assurances by the international
trustee that the trusteeship will be
lifted ‘‘as soon as financial stability
has been restored.”’

The Hotel Workers local, which
represents some 13,000 hotel and
camp workers throughout the pro-
vince, was put under international
trusteeship Sept. 27 because of
alleged ‘‘financial mismanage-
ment.’’ A reform slate of three of-
ficers elected in October, 1981 was
removed from office while a fourth
officer, Ron Bondar who had not
been on the reform slate, was
subsequently retained by interna-
tional trustee James Stamos as ac-
ting secretary.

Since that time, several unions
have launched raids against the
local and three of them — the
Canadian Association of Industrial
Mechanical and Allied Workers,
affiliated to the Confederation of
Canadian Unions, and the B.C.
Fed affiliated Brewery Workers
and the Canadian Brotherhood of
Railway and Transport Workers
— have made application to the
Labor Relations Board for cer-
tification of several hotels.

In a bid to counter the raids, the
B.C. Federation of Labor urged all
affiliates to “get behind Local 40”’
and appointed Thompson to repre-
sent the federation in the local and
to act as an ombudsman for the
rank and file.

Federation president Jim Kin-
naird had earlier termed the inter-
national trusteeship ‘‘appalling’’
but a subsequent statement issued
jointly by the federation and
trustee Stamos stated that the ex-
ecutive had unanimously endorsed
the call to back Local 40.

Kinnaird also made an oblique
reference to raids against Local 40
in his opening address to the
federation’s convention Monday,
denouncing ‘“‘those who would,
cannibalize our weaker members.”’

On Tuesday, Bonar and Stamos
called a press conference — the first
since the trusteeship — to “‘clarify
misconceptions and rumors.’’ The
conference was arranged by adver-
tising firm executive Michael
Morgan.

Stamos, the president of the
union’s Local 31 in Montreal,
defended the international’s action
as necessary because the local ‘‘was
losing money.”’

But although Stamos suggested
an outside limit of 12 months on
the length of the trusteeship, he
would not give any assurances that
the former officers would be
reinstated and argued that he could
not recommend such action.

Questioned repeatedly about his
own local’s expulsion from the
Quebec Federation of Labor, he
Stated that the reasons were
political, adding: ‘I’m not going to
parade on May | — that’s not my
philosophy of Labor Day.”

The local has applied to the LRB
to have hotels under its jurisdiction
certified as one unit and intends to
launch raiding charges under the
CLC constitution against affiliates
raiding its members.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 19, 1982— Page 3

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