Start digging already!

Yet another vote on the RAV (Richmond-Airport-Vancouver) transit project in Vancouver today. Is it expensive? - sure (roughly $1.8 billion - or over $300 per B.C. resident), but what's the alternative - perpetual gridlock and sprawl.

Once thing is for sure, with the Olympics coming, building costs only likely to rise as time goes by, gridlock on the north-south streets getting worse every year and with funding already lined up from the federal govt, the provincial govt and the airport, there will never be a better time than right now to get this thing started.

Hopefully today's vote will do just that.

Update: The vote was indeed in favour, now's lets just hope the whole thing comes in on time / on budget (not likely with a project of this size / complexity, but maybe the P3 structure of the deal will help - we'll see.)

Update (July 17, 2009): They did start digging - the project is due to be finished in the next month or two, ahead of schedule by a couple of months and over budget (by 20-30%, depending on how you measure), but less so than most projects undertaken in the last few years.