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VICTORIA For all the talk from the B.C. Liberals about turning around the finances on the money-losing Port Mann toll bridge, the latest provincial budget suggests they are still a long way from reaching the balance point on the project.

The financial struggle is factored out in the latest service plan for the Transportation Investment Corporation, the stand-alone entity established by the Liberals to oversee construction, maintenance and tolling on the Port Mann/Highway 1 expansion project.

The current plan offers a telling contrast to the one laid out by the Liberals three years ago, as the project neared completion prior to commencement of the tolling regime in December 2012.

Back then, the Liberals were forecasting that tolls would be bringing in more than $200 million annually by this point. Losses were projected at under $30 million a year. And the break-even point was to be reached in the financial year beginning April 1, 2017, just before the next provincial election.

But as it says on the patent medicine bottles, actual results may vary from those advertised on the label. And in the case of the Port Mann, reality was not long in demolishing the Liberals more fanciful projections, witness the contents of the service plan released last week.

Tolling revenue for the current financial year, ending March 31, has been scaled down to $120 million. The vaunted $200 million in annual revenue is nowhere to be found in the projections for the following three years.

With revenue projections down and operating costs (mostly debt servicing) unchanged, losses have multiplied to $89 million, triple what the Liberals were projecting just three years ago.

Far from shrinking, the losses are expected to keep growing to $101 million in the financial year beginning April 1, $102 million the following year and $106 million the year after that which is the one when the tolling regime was originally slated to arrive at the break-even point.

Gone from the service plan is any mention of the original, cabinet-ordered directive that the Port Mann project be put on a positive net income footing as of the financial year starting April 1, 2017. The Liberals quietly dropped that target two years ago, and have yet to announce a new one.

No wonder: the successive losses mean a corresponding escalation in the corporations cumulative operating deficit. It is projected to just about double from the current $312 million to $621 million three years from now.

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Vaughn Palmer: Theres no bridging gap between fanciful Port Mann projections, reality