Prime Location and Infrastructure Make Metro Vancouver a Global Hub
By land, sea or air, Metro Vancouver’s ease of transportation for industry is nothing short of outstanding.
With one of North America’s closest deep-water ports to Asia, a world-class airport and a solid ground transit network, the region lays solid claim to its status as a global gateway.
“Transportation is one of the backbones of the economy in this region because of the ports and the airport,” says Bob Wilds, managing director of the Greater Vancouver Gateway Council.
One in seven Vancouver jobs are connected to the gateway, which is the transportation component of the region that includes the airport, seaport, marine terminals, trucking industry, railway, tugboat industry and cruise ship industry.
The transportation system contributes 82,000 jobs directly and more than $6.5 billion gross domestic product annually.
Canada as a whole is a net exporter, and B.C.’s international exports alone were $32 billion in 2007. The region’s ports handled more than 80 million tons of cargo that year, making Vancouver North America’s lead exporter in tonnage.
“The majority of Canada’s exports are moving out of the Pacific Gateway, and the majority of them are coming through this gateway,” Wilds says. “Unless you have the ability to move those goods to the international marketplace where our customers are, what do we do with all the goods we produce and all the raw materials and the commodity materials that Canada has an abundance of?”
In January 2008, Canada undertook an extensive port amalgamation, combining the operations of the North Fraser, Fraser and Vancouver Port Authorities into the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.
“The Port Authority of Vancouver has been significantly financially successful and had a very limited amount of land, whereas the other two ports had limited resources and significant land availability,” Wilds says. “It just made sense from everybody’s perspective that there be one port authority.”
The Port Authority now is focused on expanding its handling of bulk commodities, expecting to triple container flow by 2020.
Vancouver is also readily accessible by air through the Vancouver International Airport, which is the closest major West Coast airport to Asia, ideally situated on the Great Circle Routes.
“These attributes lend the airport a significant competitive advantage as a premier global gateway, connecting the Asia-Pacific region with North America,” says Tony Gugliotta, senior vice president of finance and business development for Vancouver International Airport.
The airport is working to complete roughly $1 billion in improvement projects, including a new international terminal. In 2008, more than 17 million passengers passed through Vancouver International Airport, along with more than 225,000 tons of cargo.
Many road improvements, including expansions and bridge construction, are currently underway in Metro Vancouver as part of a roster of projects expected to be complete by 2013. One of the more extensive projects is the widening of Highway 1. City leaders also hope to further develop Metro Vancouver’s mass transit system in the near future, and plans are under way to connect downtown Vancouver and Richmond with the airport by train before the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
