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New transportation minister, but no new policy approaches for now to funding TransLink

September 10th, 2012 · 10 Comments

Mary Polak is the fifth transportation minister since the Liberal government came into power in 2001. Kevin Falcon made his name here, of course, in the five years from 2004-2009 and became beloved of road builders everywhere for his aggressive championing of the something-billion Gateway project, which includes the Port Mann Bridge twinning and the perimeter roads.

He also changed the way TransLink is governed, with an appointed board that makes most of the decisions, instead of a mayors’ body. The mayors now get to have a council where they can decide on extras (mostly because they usually have to pay for them), but not on what or how the approximately billion-dollar base budget is spent.

But there was also Judith Reid (01-04), Shirley Bond (09-11) and recently Blair Lekstrom (11-12).

And now Mary Polak. Not surprisingly, in Day Four of her new portfolio, she was not veering off the road in any way. As you can see here, she stuck to what has been pretty much the government playbook: We are fully in support of certain services. But the TransLink mayors have to stop asking us for money all the time, because the deal was that they would use property taxes to help pay for transit and we would take away hospital taxes.

Also: There will be a Highway rapid bus on the Port Mann when it opens. We will talk to them and maintain lines of communication (tho Polak said she can’t make the upcoming Sept. 19 mayors’ council meeting). There needs to be a good land-use plan along with transit and a change in people’s expectations. Her quote (not in the story): “It’s going to take local communities different from what there have been. Now, everybody wants a two-acre property but they still want the bus to pull up to the driveway.”

Polak, by the way, drives a Dodge Caliber, which replaced her previous Honda Civic hatchback. But she knows commuting. She’s done the trip to downtown by bus and SkyTrain and, as a girl growing up in Cloverdale, she commuted to Catholic high school in Burnaby. (Fortunately for her, by school bus, not public transit or she might still be on the road somewhere.)

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  • boohoo

    Hey, if it’s broke–don’t fix it. That’s a great motto.

    Check out the land use reports going to Council today in Surrey and tell me again where these two acre single family lots are being built? Sure ain’t Surrey….

    http://www.surrey.ca/12204.aspx

  • David

    The provincial government has an amazing arrangement: take all the credit for new transit programs while deflecting all the criticism onto others. Why would they ever want to change that?

    Examples:
    Rapid Bus – look at this awesome new service that the new highway project will enable. Look at those fantastic travel times. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain with no money to pay for it.

    Fare Gates – look at this fancy new system to deter evasion and keep you safe. We’re getting tough on cheaters. Don’t listen to the critics who claim that keeping the machines operating will cost twice as much as we’re currently losing to evasion. Ignore the experience of other cities with gates that still lose millions to evasion. Pretend that the B-Line, aka the “free line”, doesn’t exist. Close your ears and eyes when critics say TransLink will have to lay off staff to cover the cost of the machines leaving you less safe than you were before. Most of all continue to think of government services, like transit, as businesses that are supposed to break even. The last thing we want is for people to remember that much of the value of having public transit can’t be measured on a statement of profit and loss.

    U-Pass – look at this awesome deal for students to make them life-long transit users.

    OK, let’s examine it from TransLink’s perspective shall we…

    The U-Pass program was designed to be revenue neutral meaning no additional money comes into the system. Unfortunately it’s not cost neutral. A whole bunch of new buses and drivers had to be put into service to cope with the demand.

    Who takes credit for the program? Victoria
    Who bears 100% of the added cost? TransLink.

    That’s fine because it’s an investment in the future designed to get people out of cars and make them life-long transit users, an oft-stated TransLink goal.

    Problem: fares do not cover the cost of providing service. Without a change in the funding model more passengers in the future means even higher costs with only a fractional return from the fare box. So TransLink gets to lose money now in the hope that some day they’ll get to lose even more money. Where can I sign up for a deal like that?

    Any benefits of having a higher percentage of people on transit flow to things like trucking companies and the health care system, but TransLink gets to pay for it.

    Is U-Pass even working? A quick look at all the cars lining Marine Drive, 16th and many of the side streets in West Point Grey suggests that a vast number of UBC commuters are still driving. What’s changed? The location of their parking lot, the price of their parking and the availability of a “free” shuttle to get them between the parking lot and campus. For many it now costs less to drive to UBC than it did before there was a U-Pass.

    But even assuming that today’s students have reduced their driving and will opt to use transit more in the future stands on shaky ground. Ask riders of the sardine cans currently plying the routes to UBC if, when they graduate, they would willingly pay 3 times as much for the same delightfully packed transit experience and most of them would say no. The substandard experience they’re currently treated to is likely to make them rush to the auto mall the moment their first pay cheque comes in.

  • Don

    Traveled downtown on Skytrain tonight from Main Street/Science World to Granville. Trains OK, but both stations grubby and litter-filled. Worse than any system that I have used in undeveloped countries. Two guys with a pressure washer could clean up a station a night. Pathetic. Embarrassing. TransLink has got to be one of the least efficient, incompetent organizations on the planet.

  • Everyman

    @Don 3
    Too true. The privately run Canada Line is far cleaner than the other two.

  • neil21

    >>>
    There needs to be a good land-use plan along with transit and a change in people’s expectations. Her quote (not in the story): “It’s going to take local communities different from what there have been. Now, everybody wants a two-acre property but they still want the bus to pull up to the driveway.”
    <<<

    Bravo! Everybody knows the cliche: the best transport plan is a land use plan.

    However I don't like Polak's implication that it's the fault of the citizenry. Our public servants set zoning laws, setbacks, parking minima and our engineers choose to follow TAC/AASHTO's car-sized geometric street designs.

    There are too few townhouses ten minutes' tree-lined walk from a square or local main street. That's the mayors' fault, not the province's, not the voters', not translink. Our local municipal bureaucrats set the zoning code and our local engineers follow the geometric design guidelines. Nobody's holding a gun to their head.

    People love narrow streets with both restaurants and housing. People love gastown. People spend $thousands and hours in a plane to spend just one week of their lives in streets like that. I'm not saying everywhere should be, but more should be, and it definitely shouldn't be illegal as at present.

    If Metro Vancouver mayors care about transit, they need to sort out their zoning codes to replace parking with a mix of uses, and they need to offer up one lane each way on their oversized main arterial roads to transit only.

  • neil21

    And stop applauding density in towers. Towers next to freeways is a failed 60s experiment. Get ground level right. Turn your arterials into multiway boulevards http://stroadtoboulevard.tumblr.com/

    Towers are great if they’re surrounded by midrise (Transect T6 follows T5 and maybe T4). But towers in the midst of T3 single-family is just going to piss everybody off.

  • Sean Nelson

    “But the TransLink mayors have to stop asking us for money all the time, because the deal was that they would use property taxes to help pay for transit and we would take away hospital taxes.”

    Bald-faced lie. The deal was that the municipalities would implement a TEMPORARY property tax increase IF the province would agree to discuss other funding sources for the longer term. The municipalities backed out when it became apparent that the provincial government wasn’t going to honor that deal. That’s not an unreasonable response by the municipalities, IMHO.

  • Andrew Browne

    @ Sean Nelson #7

    While I don’t know for sure, I think the quote was referencing an original deal struck at Translink’s inception, whereby hospital taxation was removed from the property tax bill (e.g. school taxes, which still apply) in exchange for a transit tax being added to properties. Again, I think that’s what she meant, but I don’t know the history and can’t vouch either way. I just don’t think she was talking about the recent funding deal.

  • MB

    @ Frances:

    Kevin Falcon made his name here, of course, in the five years from 2004-2009 and became beloved of road builders everywhere for his aggressive championing of the something-billion Gateway project, which includes the Port Mann Bridge twinning and the perimeter roads.

    Altogether, including financing amortized over a typical 35-year period for public projects, the total cost will likely exceed $9 billion. It would’ve been perhaps an additional $500 million over that time if the private partner didn’t pull out during the 2008 financial meltdown.

    Nine billion dollars would be more than enough to complete the entire transit network in the metro perhaps even to European standards, as well as build commuter rail up the Valley and implement fast passenger ferries on our waters, and still leave enough change to keep fares low for a decade, build a superb regional bike network, vastly increase the HandiBus system for our ageing population and make the commuting experience far better (even enjoyable) with high quality, frequent service and excellent architecture and public art in otherwise utilitarian public transit facilities.

    Such funding will also likely contribute to lower health care costs and road taxes over the long run as more people take transit and the accident rate goes down and general health goes up with more people walking in compact, fully-complete neighbourhoods.

    Thank you Kevin Falcon. For nothing.

  • MB

    Oh yeah, a 3%-5% chunk of the 9 billion could’ve been used to rebuild / upgrade the existing Port Mann bridge and the entry ramps.