Thank you, Madam Chair and members. I'll try to be faster than that.
It's an honour to be here to speak about this critically important set of programs for TransLink.
TransLink, as I think you're aware, is the regional transportation authority for Surrey, 20 other municipalities, one first nation, and one electoral area, containing roughly 2.6 million people in the Lower Mainland. We are responsible for both the planning and the management of the movement of goods and people. That includes major roads, a significant number of bridges, the planning for public transit and regional cycling, as well as the delivery of public transit.
Traditionally, federal programs, whether predecessors to the building Canada fund, which is this one, or the investing in Canada infrastructure program, have been critical for us to meet our big city needs, which have very significant infrastructure requirements. As well, there is the role we play as a gateway city to make sure that transportation moves, for people, the economy, and goods.
I'd like to speak a little bit to the public transit program that has been announced and is now flowing and a little bit on the trade corridor fund and our experience with it so far.
We are really ramping up. I'm delighted to say that we are on pace to allocate almost all of the public transit funds that were identified in the federal program, over 11 years. We have the benefit of having a 10-year multimodal vision for the region to get on track to accept the next 1.2 million people who are coming to Metro Vancouver and to make sure that the economy is moving.
We had some pieces in place when the new public transit infrastructure fund was announced and the dollars started to flow in 2016. For us, that bifurcated program whereby upgrades and modernization can be undertaken was very helpful, in that we were able to bring forward projects that were close to shovel ready. They take some time even to go through procurement, etc., as compared with some of the larger projects that Mr. Smith talked about, which take a number of years once the funding puzzle is in place.
This is an overview of the first phase that Mr. Smith talked about, the work that's going on in Surrey. There was a broad range of projects that met the criteria for this “state of good repair”, modernization, and upgrade program.
I'm happy to report that of the $740 million of projects for which the federal government is providing half, 53% are already under contract and so are well under way, for such things as fleet—new SkyTrain cars and a new SeaBus. We've already spent about $157 million of it, and we expect that most of the contracts will be placed by the end of this year. We are on pace to spend all of the $740 million by the March 31, 2020, deadline.
There's a really nice segue in that. You can see that we are planning for both the Broadway Millennium Line in phase one as well as the Surrey LRT. These kinds of projects take significant time to get ready for procurement, roughly $20 million to $25 million of work, which was partially funded under this PTIF program. We're now at a stage at which we have put business cases in to the federal and provincial government, knowing what the costs are going to be and what the full scope of the project is. The federal dollars, through the PTIF program, act as a catalyst to bring the province and the region together to pull all of the funding that's necessary for us to have a fully funded plan.
One difficulty and one benefit of the way TransLink is structured is that we put together 10-year capital and operating plans that are fully funded over the 10 years. If we build a new rapid transit line, we know exactly where the operating costs are going to come from, where all the bus services are going to come from. We also put forward all the road infrastructure, etc. It's good from an outcomes perspective that the federal government knows they are going to get the outcomes you're looking for. It's a holistic plan, but this means that it's trickier to pull together all the funding pieces.
I'm happy to announce that back in March, the region and the province.... The province came up with a deal. The province is basically matching the federal funds at 40% for the PTIF funds.
The region was able to find the sources necessary, so we're looking at advancing that. As I mentioned, we would have 90% of the actual funding that's in that public transit fund, which is about $2.6 billion. Roughly $2.4 billion of the $2.6 billion would be allocated and would start to go under procurement, followed by construction, for completion by about 2025. These things take time.