This past week – as the debate was raging over whether Metro mayors should vote for a 2 cent hike to the gas tax and a tiny (avg. $23/yr), temporary property tax increase in order to fund several badly-needed and long-awaited transit improvements for the region (they did, thankfully) – I read with interest some of the reader comments on the topic in the mainstream press. While the following aren’t direct quotes, they roughly represent three of the most common sentiments expressed by those opposed to funding this package of transit solutions – which includes building the Evergreen Line to the Northeast corridor, putting more buses on the streets South of the Fraser and adding a B-Line rapid bus route along King George Highway:
- “Enough is enough! Get your greedy hands out of our pockets, Translink!”
- “If transit users want more buses, they should pay for them themselves!”
- “Great for people in Vancouver, but we don’t have good enough transit South of the Fraser for me to get around without my car!”
It’s understandable that motorists are fed up with paying more taxes and levies – we all are. But it’s also telling what facts they fail to consider when making these claims (and it’s not their fault – the whole system is out of whack, politically, and in terms of how the media presents these issues).
The first point (stop taxing me, damn it!) is a result of what the late urban planning guru Jane Jacobs would have called a lack of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the principle that governments are most effective and provide the highest return on tax dollars when they’re closest to the people they serve.
It’s plain to see that the lion’s share of government services we depend on in our day-to-day lives – garbage, recycling, sewer, water, parks, libraries, museums, street cleaning and maintenance, public transit, arts facilities and festivals, school boards – are provided by municipalities and regional governments. And yet, these governments receive only 8% on average of the total tax dollars citizens spend (including all income, sales, capital gains, and real estate taxes – with roughly 60% going to the federal government and a third to the Province). Thus, what we have is essentially the opposite of subsidiarity, whereby the political power and tax dollars rest in the hands of those furthest removed from the communities where they will ultimately be exercised.
The never-ending saga over the unbuilt Evergreen transit line is a perfect example of the problem with this system. The feds and Province maintain they’ve each kicked in their $400 or $500 million – now they’re just waiting on Translink, which just can’t get its act together (or so they suggest)…and so the line remains unbuilt, more than a decade after if was first put on the drawing board.
Of course Translink doesn’t have the $400 million! The minuscule tax base they have to draw on is already stretched to the limit, and there’s never much appetite amongst the region’s homeowners and businesses to further raise property or gas taxes. But since that’s virtually the only tool available to them – and they believe in what they’re doing, as do I – they have to make this difficult choice, knowing full-well they will be blamed and heckled for it. So it is to its great credit that the Translink Mayors’ Council had the courage to state their case to the public and stick to their guns when they voted to move forward with their plans this past Friday.
As to the argument that transit users should pay for system upgrades themselves – ostensibly because motorists won’t be making as much use of them – this view is patently hypocritical.
For instance, I haven’t owned a car for 7 years. That was a conscious decision – part and parcel to moving to a walkable, densified urban community where a car becomes more of a burden than a convenience (incidentally, my Gastown address gets a perfect 100 on walkscore.com, a neat tool that calculates how easy it would be to live without a car at any given address in North America – check it out).
That’s not to brag. Not everyone can move to Gastown, the Drive, or the West End – nor can everyone avoid having a vehicle. But I say this to put things in perspective. I’m a member of a car sharing program called Car2Go, through which I borrow a car for an hour, once or twice a week (at a rate of 20 cents a minute, including gas and insurance); I also ride the bus from time to time; and most of the goods I consume traveled at some point on our roads. So I am a road-user, to some degree.
And yet, it’s clear that I depend on our roads, highways and bridges far less than the person who commutes everyday in a single occupant vehicle from Abbotsford to Burnaby and back. But when the topic of drivers paying a toll for traversing a bridge or new stretch of highway comes up, invariably they get hopping mad. They forget that every time I take the bus or skytrain, I pay a toll – otherwise known as a “fare.”
For example, if I want to go to Surrey from Vancouver – unless it is for a few short minutes before jumping back on the train to Vancouver, lest my 90 minute fare expires – it costs me $10 to go there and back by skytrain! That is, unless I’m really thinking ahead and save one dollar by buying the $9 all-day pass. If we are trying to incentivize public transit use, we’re certainly not doing so with money; rather we punish transit users with the heftiest tolls around – and there are no “toll-free” skytrains or bus routes to choose from, unlike our road system.
Plainly put, transit riders have been on an expensive “user-pay” model for decades, while road tolling remains a hated and relatively little-used tool. Not only that, I’ve been subsidizing road building through my tax dollars far more than motorists have been subsidizing my transit infrastructure. And because these big-buck highway projects have the backing of the Province and feds, we’re all paying for them – through provincial and federal tax dollars. They aren’t subject to the complaints of local motorists confronted with unwelcome property tax and gas tax hikes because their funding is secured from upon high and, thus, less visible. But make no mistake, I am subsidizing the hell out of blacktop and bridge projects I will use relatively little of.
On that note, four or five years ago, when the BC Liberal Government was holding a few token public meetings regarding its massive Gateway highway program, the issue of which tax dollars should subsidize which transportation infrastructure came up. I recall cycling advocate Richard Campbell confronting a woman on the government panel about the billions being spent on highways while public transit funding languished. The woman told him, “Of course we need to build some public transit too, but we need to balance our investment between roads and transit” (emphasis mine). Mr. Campbell’s retort: “For the past half century we’ve been spending roughly ten times as much on highways and car-based infrastructure as on public transit; so ‘balance’ would mean for the next 50 years spending ten times as much on transit.”
But that’s not what we’re doing. Even today, that “(im)balance” remains roughly the same.
Moreover, transit infrastructure (with the possible exception of cadillac projects like skytrain) is far cheaper to build per mile and employs more people in the process. While the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and widening of Hwy 1 will likely exceed $4 BILLION, a study by one of the world’s top transportation engineering firms (that designed the Chunnel), showed we could get the old Interurban Line running again between Surrey and Chilliwack – passing through Langley and Abbotsford’s city centres in the process – for something like a mere half billion.
This was the iron artery that linked the Lower Mainland from 1910 to the early 1950s, carrying up to 70,000 people a day back then! Imagine how useful it could be today – offering commuters South of the Fraser a faster, safer, cheaper, more comfortable alternative to get to work, thus freeing up asphalt for those trucks and work vehicles that need to use the highway.
The final point often raised by motorists who don’t get it is that transit’s never worked for them in the past, so why should they support it now? This is a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.
The bulk of the package of transit solutions Translink’s Mayor’s Council (which suffers from a major governance problem and sorely needs more local authority and political independence from Victoria – more on that in a subsequent piece) voted to fund recently were for the Northeast corridor (the Evergreen Line) or Surrey and other communities South of the Fraser, via a new B-Line route down King George Highway and more buses on the streets in general.
To the people who claim transit’s not working in their community, I say, “Exactly!” And to make it start working, we need to invest in transit throughout the region, which is precisely what Translink is trying to do (though they really should be prioritizing that Interurban Line!)
And that was cycling advocate Richard Campbell’s point: we’ll never get people out of their cars unless we make a priority of investing in the tools that will enable them to do so. And we’re never going to do that so long as people have the misconception that spending tens of billions of dollars on autimobile-based infrastructure is a wise use of tax dollars, while spending anything on transit is a useless burden.
Its like the government has two separate pies. One to divide up for Transit funding and the other for other transportation (automobile / pavement) projects.
The transit pie is way smaller. When my mom made pie crust she used most of it for pies and then the little strips left over made a few crumbly cookies.
Current transportation funding means Transit gets the bits of pie crust pastry left over after other transportation projects like Freeways and bridges are covered by most of the pastry (funding) available.
Billions – thousands of millions are being spent on the new Port Mann Bridge, the Highway one expansion and the South Fraser Freeway. The South Fraser Freeway alone around $1.6 billion = $1,600,000,000.00.
This is 4 times the amount $400,000,000.00 needed for the Evergreen line. and approximately 3 times the $500,000,000.00 needed for electric Light rail from Chilliwack to Scott Road Sky train station.
These pavement politic projects are not scrambling for funds though – they get their huge slices of transportation funding with little fuss. Start giving Transit a fair piece of the transportation pie too, rather than just some cookie crumb pieces to fight over.
I do opine that it is not bright decision to waste free time writing the essay. Lots of students go other way! They don’t compose the writing services essays by their own. They just buy book reports in the perfect admission essay writing service.
It is understandable that cash makes people disembarrass. But how to act when somebody doesn’t have money? The one way only is to try to get the loan or short term loan.
Every time I drive from Abbotsford across the Port Mann Bridge I’m absolutely dumbfounded that while the entire highway is torn up to build two more lanes for cars they are not laying track down the median for a lightrail system. It boggles the mind.
I don’t think most people in Vancouver have any idea of the incredible building boom going on in the Fraser Valley. Thousands and thousands of houses and condos, from the freeway all the way south to Hwy 10. Say goodbye to the ALR north of Hwy 10 in Langley and Cloverdale.
As far as resurrecting the Interurban it would be a slow, winding, pleasant ride through the countryside and would take longer than it would to drive. Commuters want fast and direct, that’s why it should be down the freeway.
And they’re not going to twin the Port Mann they’re going to tear it down. What a waste. It could be used for light rail.
We’re different than Europe. We are more spread out. Going from Prince Rupert to Vancouver is a lot longer than Berlin to Frankfurt and they have a bigger tax base. We can’t do it. If you think we can, you are just being blind to the realities of this province. We rurals are not as equal as city pigs, to be sure, but we go to the city and the city comes to us. How do you suppose that happens? Skytrain? By pouring money into mass transit for a few square miles you claiming centre-of-the universe-dollars. Elitist. Worse, you are adding to the densification of the city. Concentrate that pollution, that sewage, that crowding. For whom? Think DG: for BIG BROTHER to work his evil, it helps to have all the people plugged in and reliant on HIS systems. See: BC Hydro. See: BC Ferries. See: BIG OIL. It is all about controlling the peasantry. Always has been.
One more time: the infrastructure is already there. Use it. Don’t waste it. Just use it with smaller electric cars or whatever. It is not the car that is the problem, it is the design of them, the size of them, the fuel for them and the commitment we have already made to them.
It’s not all bad, Mr. Johnson. We do have some decent transit here. Trasnlink’s annual ridership is projected to surpass last year’s by a whopping 10%. That’s huge growth that suggests it is indeed serving a lot of people. But it’s service range is too small and I concur the focus on big-buck skytrain is truly foolish. Yet the whole point of my article was that this is not all Translink’s fault. Until we have a regionally elected and represented board with adequate provincial and federal tax dollars to work with – absent the political control and strings attached – Translink will never work for us. And since this is at its core a funding problem, unless we divert considerable funds from highways and car-based infrastructure to sensible, high-value transit, we’re not going to solve the problem.
In Europe, where most people own cars, the various transit systems work and provide an affordable (well in most cases) and efficient alternative to the car because transit planning is a science where the transit system is designed to suit the customer’s needs and pocket book.
In Vancouver, we plan and build hugely expensive gadgetbahnen, which are force fed with bus passengers and 100,000 $1 a day u-pass students, designed by career bureaucrats who design transit to enable politicians to win the next election.
Transit in Vancouver is not designed to be affordable or effective, rather, it is designed to sustain bureaucrat’s jobs.
You can throw all the money you want at Translink and it’s product will remain the same – extremely bad. Taking the car is just a better option.
since we in northamerica are hooked on cars due to the
brainwashing by the large corporate controllers of oil and gasoline because of huge profits.nothing will change .coul’nt look to europe to try there public
transit system which is years ahead of ours.regards
Philip, these are all points I conceded in my piece – that I, too am a road user, though not a car owner; that drivers already pay gas and road taxes; and that Translink’s board should be made up of elected representatives. You’ll get no argument from me on any of those points.
Drivers pay hefty taxes on every liter of gas they use to help improve those roads that you say your subsidizing. And Buses use those roads also payed for by gas taxes. Your argument is missing a very important point. The federal and provincial governments are elected. Translink is not. This is called taxation without representation.
Furthermore, the argument that public transit is preferable to driving is flawed. When you look at the cost of the public transit system and the cost of running that system compared to the revenues the government collects the transit system has always lost money. While the road system with the taxes from cars makes money. It makes money because huge amounts of freight can be transported on those roads also which makes it an important part of the economic engine in this country. Transit aside from moving a lot of people around does not move freight.
I wish people actually read some books and studies about transit, rather than making it up as they go or cherry pick what new taxes to add.
As long as we continue our current planning, we will achieve nothing. Contrary to the odd notion that transit type is not important but instead build less roads.
The fact is, buses just do not attract the motorist from the car and there are many reasons for this.
Trolleybuses are good, if used properly, but in Vancouver we squander the advantages of trolley buses, by treating trolley bus routes as just plain old bus routes and interchange, trolley and diesel operation.
We have done everything wrong in Metro Vancouver and throwing more money at the problem will not improve things, except hiring more bureaucrats and gold-plating their pension plans.
I for one, strongly believe that the only way to change things is to starve TransLink of money.
By caving in to Trans Link and giving them more cash is akin to giving a drug addict, more drugs in hopes that he will cure himself.
“For the past half century we’ve been spending roughly ten times as much on highways and car-based infrastructure as on public transit; so ‘balance’ would mean for the next 50 years spending ten times as much on transit.”
This is the key. We must shift spending from road widening and new urban freeways to transit. Exactly what type of transit is secondary, although important. I personally think trolley buses should be used a lot more, in transit lanes so they are not slowed by traffic. But rail also has a big role to play too.
JDC, you go ahead and go back to the land. Some of us will live in urban communities for some time to come, and, as such, we need to build the kind of infrastructure that supports healthy lifestyles, community, and reduced air pollution and carbon emissions. There’s nothing self-defeating about that logic. If you keep building highways, you’ll get urban sprawl. If you build light rail, you give people an affordable, accessible alternative to the automobile – plus all the attenuating social benefits…Mr. Johnston, I’m with you all the way on LRT. This again brings me back to the “subsidiarity” challenge that confronts Translink. They’re given $900 million by the province and feds – but ONLY if they use on exactly the type of transit they want to see, i.e., another blue ribbon skytrain-type project, where the development focus is indeed on big projects for developers. This is what happened with RAV – the essential provincial and federal funding becomes a means to control local decision making. It’s “take the money and build what we tell you to or don’t take the money and build nothing” – which puts Translink and regional politicians in a corner. This is a point I tried to make with my piece.
As I have stated many times, transit is to move transit customers, not to create density to enrich developers.
We desperately need to rethink how we plan and build “rail” transit.
Back in the mid 90’s, during the Broadway-Lougheed fiasco, I received a telephone call from a chap who worked for a Swiss transportation firm.
After he found out that BC Transit fobbed him off on me, we had a very meaningful discussion.
What he said was earth shattering.
He stated; “By building a LRT/streetcar line from BCIT to UBC, via Broadway and 10th Ave. and a line to Stanley Park, via either Main St. or Granville St., we could replace bus service on both routes (saving operational costs) and increase ridership 3 times in 5 years (modal shift. The new LRT/streetcar lines would not only pay their operating costs, but also pay their debt servicing costs as well, in fact they would make a profit. With such a line, private companies would build the line without any taxpayers money at all!”
Absolutely no one was interested.
Until we learn to plan and fund transit other than gouging taxpayers, regional politicians and bureaucrats will shake down the current taxpayer with impunity.
The other problem with our transit planning is that buses are very poor in attracting ridership. Whether it be B-Line buses, trolley buses, or even moreexotic guided buses.
To compete with modern LRT, buses must be guided or have their own busway, which greatly drives up costs, almost to that of light rail.
The B-Line buses now offered by TransLink are merely tarted up express buses and one must then ask the question, by not speed up the existing bus servcie to the point that express buses are not needed?
Of course TransLink will have none of this and continue to offer bus based transit options that will not attract the motorisat from the car.
In the real world, the success of a new transit line is guaged, not on capacity or ridership, rather on modal shift, from car to transit. As Translink never mentions modal shift, one assumes that it hasn’t happened, which means for our investment of over $8 billion, we have just given bus riders a faster and extremely more expensive ride.
Throwing more taxpayermoney at this will not solve a thing.
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/union-urges-vancouver-mayors-to-accept-gas-taxes-to-pay-for-more-transit-so-they-can-hire-more-union-bus-drivers/
The problems with TransLink’s current planning is that it is unworkable and it is unworkable because TransLink adheres to 1950’s transit planning practice.
We continue to build SkyTrain light-metro, which is now considered obsolete and costs 3 to 4 times more to and about 40% more to operate than comparable light rail lines.
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/transit-is-about-moving-people-stupid/
Even the lowly streetcar has proven in revenue service to be able to carry over 10,000 more passengers per hour per direction then the maximum theoretical capacity that has been given for SkyTrain.
Building a SkyTrain Evergreen Line will only compound our transit woes and guarantee TransLink comes back begging for more taxpayer cash in 2 to 3 years.
Not only is SkyTrain obsolete but its family of light-metro is obsolete simply because modern LRT can carry more, at faster speeds, at a cheaper cost.
A “rail” transit line is as fast as it is designed to be and TransLink has craftily designed its light rail plans to be deliberately slower than SkyTrain.
Continuing, with an Evergreen SkyTrain is just wasting another $1.5 billion dollars.
Just to clarify – my remark about “put-down” generalizations has to do with some comments made, not with the article. Thank you.
I am a Canadian who definitely knows how to do with less; like many. Stop the put-down generalizations. I have made a very small footprint, have not had a car most of my life, which has been long. But with a child with special needs and my health issues now a car is a necessity for appointments, errands, social life; transit doesn’t make it possible to take care of everything in a time efficient way nor get us where we have to go within good proximity without wearing out. He can’t ride a bike more than a few blocks. Before we had a car I developed shoulder problems carrying things on and off buses, to say nothing of the huge hassles and frustrations of packed buses and rude people. Plus, transit fees are high – especially for family groups. So I always have to weigh our valuable time, his needs and the cost factor of transit or driving when making decisions. So far, driving has given us a much fuller life than we could have living in Van without a car. As usual, those who can least afford the extra taxes will pay.
Why don’t they just stop building big projects for awhile? d’oh. One thing we can be sure of, those pushing for this won’t be the ones using it.
DG. No one says ‘nay’ anymore.
The interurban lines were ripped up in a lot of places; the ones that did not are the lucky ones today…..Toronto is the perfect example…..
I have always advocated for a high speed rail line right down the middle of the freeway to Hope.
I am referring to mag-lev like in Japan; 45 minutes from Hope to Downtown Vancouver with 2 minute stops at all major communities such as Abbottsford, Langley etc.
I mean think about it; a single vehicle occupant will be tooling along the freeway around 20 kms at 7:45am and witness this train going by at the speed of light….might get them to thinking as to why they are not on that train…..….
Two things will happen; anyone who owns property in Hope will become a millionaire overnight and the train will fill up so fast we will require another line.
But no we build Skytrain in 1986…I believe we are one of only two places in the world that is still using this technology; only because Bombardier is the corporate welfare bum of the federal government and has been for decades.
Provincial legislation should have been put in place in 1986 requiring any successive governments to build a minimum of 1 mile of track every year. By now, almost thirty years on the entire lower mainland would have rail transit.
As for some posters’ over-generalizations and demonizing motorists, some of us like myself are mobile technicians and/ or service people for which transit is not a realistic option.
You defeat your own argument. If they build it, they will come. Yep. More highrises, more concentration, more traffic. I lived in HK for awhile. Didn’t need much more than the MTR and a cab. But I also desperately needed to get the hell out! Like millions of others who cannot stand the density, the pollution and the madding crowd. The city sucks. It can’t be otherwise. Think: the Matrix. We do not need mass transit unless we we live in masses. And that is an unhealthy life. I acquiesce somewhat – people migrate to the largest gene pool…ooops….city. They always will. Transit or no. And then they come under the eyes of CCTV, the oppression of the police and the tyranny of the office. And they come to think this is the way it should be. It isn’t. Your films are right – live in nature. And let us spend a fraction of our planning time and money on making non-polluting cars. Hell, the infrastructure is there and the technology is just around the corner. Shed those ‘communal’ shackles, DG. I like you but don’t want to go on the same bus as you everyday to the same place doing the same thing being watched by BIG Bro.
JDC, one more point…What you’re missing is the connection between urban development, people’s lifestyles and the type of transportation infrastructure we build. Once you have a highway and sprawl-based model, you have big box stores where people go to load up the SUV with weeks’ worth of groceries at a time – and no you can’t take that on the bus. But back in the day (and in my present day walkable Gastown), people wandered down the street to the butcher, the baker, the grocer and picked up fresh food for dinner. They didn’t need SUVs to cart home their stores. It is and always has been like that film “Field of Dreams” – “if you build it, they will come.” If you build freeways, you get sprawl suburbs and big box stores that are utterly car-dependent. If you build transit around densified communities, you get situations where it is possible, nay, desirable to leave the car at home – or maybe even one day lose it altogether.
JDC, of course transit worked! It worked for 50 years until the old interurban street car lines were bought up and shut down all around North America by a conglomerate made up of Ford, GM, Firestone and Unocal – which sabotaged a well functioning transportation system to advance for their own selfish interests. Transit not only worked – it was deliberately destroyed by the automobile lobby and continues to suffer the same fate today. I didn’t say transit needs to or can work for everyone in every situation – the point, as I made in my piece, is to get those drivers off the road that don’t need to be there, by giving them a safer, cheaper, faster, more comfortable commuting alternative. Over 70% of the vehicle traffic over the Port Mann Bridge everyday is single occupant vehicles, mostly commuting to and from work. That’s where the opportunity lies. That’s where the Westcoast Express, Interurban, skytrain, Evergreen Line, etc. can work for people. PS I don’t know what buses and trains you’re watching, but the far bigger problem is buses being too full. Translink’s passenger volume is on track to beat last year’s by 10 PERCENT! That’s huge growth; meanwhile people get frustrated with transit because these buses and trains are so full they have to routinely endure pass-ups and uncomfortable conditions that can only act as a deterrent to transit use.
Sorry, DG, I disagree. Vehemently. Mass transit doesn’t work. Never did. No where. Yes, it appears that it does in London and New York, say, but it doesn’t. Witness the traffic. Those cars crawl around buses and over subways spewing pollutants for a reason – the system doesn’t go where the person needs to go. And that is especially true in the Lower Mainland. Add some groceries, tools or materials and transit is out of the question. The problem is NOT that we should all sit together. The problem is pollution. Make cars that don’t pollute and all of a sudden the need for transit disappears. So do subsidies. People will pay for their own transportation. Always have done. And worse – look a bus at anytime during the day but rush hour. It is empty and following it’s scheduled route like a robot. Unconsciously. That should be a hint. Finally: mass transit only works in a hive mentality where everyone is a drone. You are feeding the Orwellelian monster that government wants for us. C’mon, DG! A guy who loves nature knows that ‘imposed’ solutions don’t work. Go with the natural flow – individual vehicles that graze and hunt where they want.
Roger, you make some very salient points here. Thank you. I fully concur. One of the reasons Evergreen has taken so long to build is that its design and cost have been monkeyed with along the way, transforming it from a cost-effective light-rail line to another costly blue-ribbon project…Myna, I hate to make this about non-car users vs. car users, though my article admittedly provokes that kind of debate. This is much more a political matter – it’s about where those who hold the purse strings are diverting our tax dollars, and the lack of alternatives most folks have to driving as a result. Part of the reason I wrote this piece is out of frustration with the uninformed anti-transit rhetoric that often percolates from the media stories on funding transit through tax increases. Like I say, those folks have the wrong target and lack perspective (which they don’t get from the mainstream media) when they make these claims. I’d rather see those energies directed at the political system that is chronically misspending our infrastructure dollars.
Motorists are ignorant belligerents.
We have to pay for so much extra due to their driving: it’s not just roads, we have to pay for everything: emergency response, police surveillance,hospital time, rehab, street cleaning, parking lots, coroners, courts, and then all the add ons that affect our health such as drive in everythings, and especially junk food joints, filthy streets and horrid NOISE pollution ,societal stress, crime, and a moral malaise that accompanies use of the automobile
ICBC should raise the rates,alot,and do it according to use and put that into transit
“For instance, I haven’t owned a car for 7 years.”
Hell Damien, I haven’t owned a car since 1987.
The secret, your walkscore attests: walk! We don’t have to live in sprawl: we’ll be fitter too.
You say, “though they really should be prioritizing that Interurban Line!”. Apodectic!
Evergreen will be another Canada Line: massive cost (Rafe tells of huge debt: goverment lying), community disruption, few stations, totally inflexible and limited access.
Tell me, what is more environmentally unsustainable than debt (especially to international banksters: see OWS)?
Under the radar, when high priced shiny trinkets are posited, as green friendly is the massive input of dirty energy in manufacture, transport of components, and tunneling.
What is needed are interconnected, emissions free, street level tram cars just as Dave Barrett proposed back in the sixties.
Such a TX system requires, little reconfiguration of neighbourhoods. Vancouver is 95% there: Thu Drive, your Gastown, Kerridale, Champlain etc.
High price techno-gadgetry appeals to the little mind competing with big international cities that don’t even notice, no matter how hard we try!
I agree, Jim, that skytrain is a big part of the problem – and it is also a product of a system that lacks “subsidiarity”. The RAV (Canada) Line was foisted on Translink via a foolish P3 model that rewarded SNC Lavalin and put Cambie Street businesses out of business. It was this model – and being forced to do skytrain as opposed to cheaper alternatives like light rail along the old Arbutus Line that mayors like Burnaby’s Derek Corrigan objected to when they first opposed RAV. And it was for this reason the old democratically-represented Translink Board was dismantled, in favour of board appointed and controlled by the Province…Zweisystem has posted a number of helpful comments on previous transit-related stories. I am a big fan of light rail, Rail for the Valley, and bringing back the Interurban.
The problem is Skytrain. It is bankrupting the transit system. Tunnels and bridges are the most expensive part of a transit network, and Translink decided that their entire rail system needs to be either on a bridge, or in a tunnel. Zweisystem from the Rail for the Valley Blog is an excellent source of information on this topic and I think it would be great if you could do an interview with him.
Canadians have no idea how to “make do” with less. Everything is overbuilt, over regulated and too expensive. BC Ferry Corporation has a problem because the system they have set up is too expensive for its users to afford it. Large, articulating buses with GPS, CCTV, handicapped access and highly paid labour have no place in dowtown Vancouver. The only way ridership will increase is if fast convenient pickup and dropoff is ensured. That means 8 to 10 passenger vans that can pick up and drop off at will and feed the major routes. So my “comment” would be: We are taxed enough. Cut your coat according to your cloth.
I agree about prioritizing the Interurban Line, and it’s time to start talking about West Coast Express lines to White Rock and Squamish, too.
Where’s the money to come from to pay for this, AND a Skytrain line to UBC, too? I can’t see yet another two or three cents per litre tax on gasoline. I think we should be talking about carbon tax revenue.