Port of Vancouver Discussion

[physicist1028]

Originally Posted by wrenegade

So even at low tide, regardless of the draft, the ships are too tall?

Yep. We get some big ships as it is, but the current and upcoming generations of ships are gigantic.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Seems Steveston would be a bit far off the beaten track. It seems to me that having a cruise terminal centrally located would have more economic benefits for the city.

Wasn't there a proposal some time back to build a BC Ferries terminal at Iona Island near YVR? Wonder if that could work for cruise ships. Added benefit that it is close to the airport for American passengers.

No less central than Piraeus is for Athens or Civitavecchia is for Rome. Also keep in mind many passengers get right off the boat and head for the airport, making Steveston more convenient. Furthermore while Vancouver has been allowing mid-range hotels to disappear (Inn on False Creek, Empire Landmark, Bosmans Motor Inn and soon Coast Denman) Richmond has a lot more affordable hotel options for those who want to stay a couple nights. I do see a problem maneuvering such large ships in the Steveston channel though.

I can't see anything getting built at Iona now, environmental opposition shot it down last time, it would be even more vociferous now.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by whatnext

No less central than Piraeus is for Athens or Civitavecchia is for Rome. Also keep in mind many passengers get right off the boat and head for the airport, making Steveston more convenient. Furthermore while Vancouver has been allowing mid-range hotels to disappear (Inn on False Creek, Empire Landmark, Bosmans Motor Inn and soon Coast Denman) Richmond has a lot more affordable hotel options for those who want to stay a couple nights. I do see a problem maneuvering such large ships in the Steveston channel though.

I can't see anything getting built at Iona now, environmental opposition shot it down last time, it would be even more vociferous now.

Piraeus is 8km from the core of Athens, Civitavecchia is about 60km. Both city centres are set inland. The ports are at the deepest nearby port.

Downtown Vancouver was built as a deep water port. Why would you want to move the user base away from the most ideal facilities?

Replacing the LGB is likely to be way cheaper than providing a new facility of similar quality to any potential downtown cruise ship terminals.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

Piraeus is 8km from the core of Athens, Civitavecchia is about 60km. Both city centres are set inland. The ports are at the deepest nearby port.

Downtown Vancouver was built as a deep water port. Why would you want to move the user base away from the most ideal facilities?

Replacing the LGB is likely to be way cheaper than providing a new facility of similar quality to any potential downtown cruise ship terminals.

Simple, there's very little room to expand the downtown port facilities for cruise ships, especially in light of it being a seasonal business.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Simple, there's very little room to expand the downtown port facilities for cruise ships, especially in light of it being a seasonal business.

The raw passenger numbers haven't been going up. Just the trend has been towards larger, more cost effective ships.

They just decommissioned Ballantyne Pier for this reason. They don't need to have 5 berths available, just a couple really big ones.

[stump]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Seems Steveston would be a bit far off the beaten track. It seems to me that having a cruise terminal centrally located would have more economic benefits for the city.

Wasn't there a proposal some time back to build a BC Ferries terminal at Iona Island near YVR? Wonder if that could work for cruise ships. Added benefit that it is close to the airport for American passengers.

I don't see Steveston/Richmond ever approving that nor would there be the transportation infrastructure available to handle the amount of cruise ship passengers.

Steveston cancelled the major tall ship festival because too many people came for 2 days.

It took years just get a new grocery store built and i'm pretty sure they don't even allow buildings higher then 3 stories in that area as well.

I wonder how many people had to be paid off just to get Mcdonalds and Starbucks allowed to open in Steveston.

Steveston wants to be a little village in their corner of Richmond. A cruise ship terminal would destroy that.

[officedweller]

Size comparison:


https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=360

[Gordon]

It is unlikely Alaska will see the Mega Ships ( Oasis of the Seas) Most of the large ships that that Home port in Seattle can And do make a couple of stops in Vancouver every year The Explorer of the seas & Norwegian Bliss(next year) are the only Seattle based ships

The Ports of Call In Alaska can't handle 2 4,000 pax ships at one time.

[YVR_Future]

Originally Posted by Xrayal
I looked at Sea island. My questions. Are the north Fraser channels deep enough? Would be worth the dredging if possible? What are the requirements of being near runways? If you placed it anywhere near the South terminal what impacts would it have on operations there. Would this location preclude any direct rapid transit options to the new terminal?

I'm pretty sure you couldn't build anything under the direct path of the runways themselves. How much berth they require, I'm not sure. The problem is, if you go too far north, it would end up blocking the Fraser river.

[abbymk]

I think Swishwash Island is the ideal location. It's close to YVR and they could connect it to both sea island and Richmond. It doesn't seem to obstruct any landing path either. Is it protected or anything of the sort?

Edit: never mind, looks like it's a bird sanctuary.

[hollywoodnorth]

I have to think a new Ferry Terminal/Cruise Ship terminal combined with a new Runway at YVR and some sort of people mover from the Oceanside terminal to the skytrain would be ideal.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by abbymk

I think Swishwash Island is the ideal location. It's close to YVR and they could connect it to both sea island and Richmond. It doesn't seem to obstruct any landing path either. Is it protected or anything of the sort?

Edit: never mind, looks like it's a bird sanctuary.

I doubt the Middle Arm is deep enough.

[casper]

Originally Posted by hollywoodnorth

I have to think a new Ferry Terminal/Cruise Ship terminal combined with a new Runway at YVR and some sort of people mover from the Oceanside terminal to the skytrain would be ideal.

I don't think skytrain makes a lot of sense for a Cruise Ship terminal.

If you take a cruise the normal way it works is, the day before your cruise comes into port, you are told you can get off as early as 7:00 AM, everyone has to be off by 9:00 AM. They collect and colour code your bags the night before. When you group is called you go through customs and immigration. By 10 or 11 the ship is cleared.

The passengers coming onto the ship as told do not arrive before 11 and usually given a target arrival time between 12:00 and 2:00.

You basically have 2-4,000 people leaving in the morning and the same number arriving in the afternoon. All with bags. This is the kind of setup for a fleet of buses works best.

[officedweller]

When Canada Line was designed, there was supposed to be a walkway from the Waterfront Station to the cruise ship terminal,
but it was cancelled and never built.

One thing is that not all cruise passengers come in as a group tour, so you'll also have a lot of people just taking taxis
- which can be congested.

Anywhere on Sea Island could easily accommodate a shuttle bus to/from the airport terminal and/or Templeton Station.
It would be pretty cool if they could build a pier / cruise terminal on the Middle Arm.
The related question is whether there would be space for a ship to turn around.


https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Ric...!4d-123.133569

[ClaytonA]

https://www.agassizharrisonobserver....-surrey-docks/

... Fraser Grain Terminal Ltd. has submitted an application to the Port of Vancouver to build a grain terminal at 11041 Elevator Rd. that would handle four million tones of grain per year, at the site of a terminal that currently deals with a half-million tonnes per year. An estimated 309 trains would deliver the grain by rail through Surrey, along the CN rail mainline, and most of it would be loaded directly onto 62 ocean-going ships each year.

Moreover, roughly 600,000 tonnes of grain would be loaded into containers and put on ships or trucked to Deltaport and other terminals. ...

Meantime, BHP Billiton is proposing to build an eight million tonne per year potash terminal at the docks, and is currently under environmental review by the Port of Vancouver. Potash is a mineral salt used to produce fertilizer and the proposed terminal would be on the site of the current container terminal at Surrey Fraser Docks.

If approved, 10 trains of potash would be delivered to the docks weekly from a Saskatchewan mine by way of covered trains along the CN rain mainline through Surrey. ...

Surrey wants another interchange on the SFPR. Bolt on type of expansion.

[whatnext]

Looks like this is project is DOA:

Environment officials have struck a potential death blow to the Port of Vancouver’s $2-billion container expansion in South Delta, saying the risks to a significant migratory population of western sandpipers are simply too great for the project to proceed.

A written response from Environment and Climate Change Canada to the Canadian Environment Assessment Agency (CEAA) describes the predicted impact of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project on hundreds of thousands of sandpipers as “potentially high in magnitude, permanent, irreversible, and, continuous.”...

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-n...t-roberts-bank

[officedweller]

I wonder if that will mean more expansion of the Fraser Port along the river itself?

[ClaytonA]

The on-site capacity expansions at Robert's Bank (related, but standalone projects) are supposed to be done this quarter.

Culverts or concrete passages through/under parts of the project could mitigate salinity change issues. Could put them under the causeway too. They could get creative.

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Also I'm not subscribed to the Port's newsletters, but there's no website updates on the Centerm expansion that was supposed to start in January either. Last filing is from October. Could DP World be shifting even more investment north to Prince Rupert?

[Pinion]

.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by Pinion

This was pretty depressing to see out the corner of my eye today. Popped up outta nowhere south of Park and Tilford (North Van).

It's even more gigantic looking in person. That's number two of three new north shore wheat grain complexes that I know of...

just wondering, why was it depressing to see?