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TransLink snapshot: Budget trimmed, ridership dips, population growing, no money to expand

May 29th, 2014 · 121 Comments

We all trekked out to Surrey (sign of where the next major rapid-transit project will go?) yesterday to hear TransLink officials talk about the annual general report on the agency.

These TransLink events are always kind of sad experience. To the rest of the world, TransLink is a roaring success — about to have more miles of subway track than anywhere else in North America, 234 million trips a year, ridership growth of 80 per cent over the last 15 years.

But there’s a sense of desperation about where it’s all going to go next, given that the agency is facing the prospect of tens of thousands more people coming into the region every year and no sense of where the money will come from to expand the system.

My brief story from the Globe here and their annual report here. BTW, I notice that, yes, the ridership numbers are down slightly, but that was also the case for Victoria, the next biggest transit system in the province. Numbers elsewhere in the province were also flat, according to BC Transit’s annual report. (That’s the agency that oversees transit for the rest of the province — remember them?) Seems to be about more than just TransLink funding or whatever — possibly fewer trips because of economic conditions or other factors.

 

 

 

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  • teririch

    @Bill #95:

    At one time I think they was a form that was completed by a parent along with a small sum of money paid, ($2 or so) now, I have no idea.

    Here you go – November 18, 2013/Vancouver Sun:

    ….’Forty children come to Richmond’s William Bridge Elementary hungry every day and bring nothing for lunch. By cobbling together donations from people and businesses, the staff has so far been able to provide bagels, cream cheese, jam and yogurt.

    It’s a similar story at 13 other Richmond elementary and high schools. Eight Richmond schools have lunch programs and six schools have both breakfast and lunch. One school is feeding 175 kids. Only a few of those food programs are daily.

    But at every school, it’s up to the staff to scramble to find the money for food or donors willing to provide the food.

    Richmond has the second highest poverty rate in Canada at 22 per cent, according to the Richmond school board’s website. Last fall, the board gave assistant superintendent Wendy Lim the task of trying to figure out how best to address the widespread poverty.

    After surveying all the schools, Lim reported to the board in May about the food programs. She also reported that many other basic needs are not met. There are kids without eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, dental care, bus passes and money for field trips.

    But even knowing the needs, Lim says, it’s difficult to figure out how best to deal with them because so much of the poverty in Richmond is hidden. Unlike in Vancouver or Surrey, it’s not concentrated in any particular school or neighbourhood. It’s in every school and neighbourhood.

    Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Hundreds+thousands+kids+school+hungry/9177830/story.html#ixzz33cposwHE

  • Bill Lee

    And here is the 6 page (PDF, 200K) School District 38 (Richmond, B.C.) report on “Child Poverty Issues and Initiatives in the Richmond School District” Sept 17, 2012

    http://www.sd38.bc.ca/board/Board_Agendas/FOV4-000B1A5A/FOV4-000BB0E5/Item%205%28b%29%20ChildPovertyReport.pdf

    And see the later summary in the top-of-the-page “Community Context” set of the 9 page Literacy report (webpage) at:
    sd38.bc.ca/district/about/districtliteracyplan

  • boohoo

    ‘But at every school, it’s up to the staff to scramble to find the money for food or donors willing to provide the food.’

    Ugh. So tired of hearing about these selfish, lazy teachers.

  • brilliant

    @rph95-so the taxpayer’s on the hook because Mrs Wang is too lazy to make lunch?!

    @Chris Keam 100-poor fellow, it must be hard to subscribe to every tired cliche in the Lefty handbag while one lives in a rented box and the objects of your righteous empathy nibble up the choicest real estate.

  • Kirk

    @98 teririch
    http://globalnews.ca/news/1372644/bank-of-mom-and-dad-increasingly-financing-first-homes/

    I watched it. It’s like the largest transfer of wealth every seen. Young people are giving up a record portion of their future income to condo developers. But, even that’s not enough. They have to hand over their parent’s money too. It seems so financially insane.

  • teririch

    @Kirk #105:

    I agree.

    But with inflated costs of land, young adults don’t have a lot of choices.

    I would also think that it has a negative impact on their parents retirement funds as well.

    Did you see the front page article on the Sunday Province about tree planting? The young guy profiled made $50K in 5 months.

    Two years back I had a co-worker who told me he paid for his uni by tree planting during the summer months. He was averaging $420/day. I have to say, if I were of that age and able bodied (it is back breaking work) I would go.

  • rph

    I know these Richmond neighbourhoods of million dollar homes, luxury cars, well dressed children (and parents), dinners out, money for tutors, and yearly trips “back home”. And having been involved in PACs in Richmond, I also know the schools and students.

    Stats Can figures are reported income based, and not asset and sheltered income based.

    And this skews the poverty stats.

    And Mrs Wang is not too lazy to make a lunch. Quite often she drives to school with take-out in hand at lunch time. But hey, a free lunch provided by the school is even better. And there is no shame in accepting “free”.

  • teririch

    @rph #95:

    There will always be those that game the system because they think it is free.

    There is no ‘free’. At the end of the day, someone pays.

  • rph

    Teri I don’t even think most are deliberately gaming the system. It’s provided, so why not take advantage of it.

    If you stand on the street corner handing out free chocolate bars, you will be mobbed with people wanting one. Including those who can well afford to buy their own. Not to mention those who don’t really want one, or need one, but what the heck, it’s free.

  • teririch

    @rph #109

    Point taken.

  • teririch

    ‘Stats Can figures are reported income based, and not asset and sheltered income based.’

    Or non-reported income….

  • teririch

    A very intersting read:

    http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1440792/immigration-property-prices-and-vancouver-experts-view

  • Bill

    @rph

    That is the big challenge for social programs – set the criteria too loose then a lot of help will go to people who don’t need it; too tight and deserving people may be cut off. If you don’t have any objective measure like a means test then there is no criteria and the number of free hot lunches served is meaningless as a measure of poverty.

    It is interesting that while the poverty rate based on basic needs has been declining, there seems to be a increase in the number of school lunch programs which is a pretty basic need.

  • boohoo

    @63/72

    Awww. Sounds like you were. 🙁

  • Bill Lee

    @teririch // Jun 4, 2014 at 1:00 pm #112

    That article from Ian Young’s blog was from March 05th March 2014, on the correlation of immigration numbers and housing prices using UBC David Ley’s numbers.

    Of more recent interest today, is today’s Mr. Young’s succinct call-out of rotund real estate promoting Bob Ransford’s Vancouver Sun drivel column of Saturday defending sales numbers.

    http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1525043/vancouver-real-estate-cheerleader-crying-racist-dont-bother-kow-towing

    Last week, pro-development political consultant Bob Ransford used his column in the Vancouver Sun to draw a line between the debate over the city’s chronic housing unaffordability and anti-Chinese bigotry.

    Ransford, himself a former developer, even warned that raising questions about how to deal with the issue begins to “tread very close” to the racist anti-Chinese head tax.

    Speaking as an ethnic Chinese new immigrant to Vancouver, forgive me if I don’t kow-tow in gratitude, as Ransford tries to hose down timely debate on the impact of foreign money here. When a rich, white political consultant cries “racist” about Vancouver’s most pressing issue of equity and social justice, in a city with one of the lowest median incomes in Canada, it reeks of the worst kind of opportunism.

    1000 MORE words
    (….The Hongcouver blog is devoted to the hybrid culture of its namesake cities: Hong Kong and Vancouver. All story ideas and comments are welcome. Connect with me by email ian.young(at)scmp.com or on Twitter, (at)ianjamesyoung70.)

  • Bill Lee

    If the new Bus/Skytrain Compass card ever
    works, (I was one of the 15,000 early testers
    and it only worked one out of 5 times on the
    buses, and 2 of 5 on the Skytrain, and then
    you could see the bus screen down by your hips
    to see the many error messages. It may be a
    real disaster. Bring back the 25 cent tokens, I say),
    Turn the new Compass card into a ring or other shape
    schemes are all over the Internets recently.

    “Well we were right, he had deconstructed a London Oyster Bus/Tube card and rebuilt it into a fully functional sugru (molded plastics) Oyster key fob! We thought it was so good that we’ve made a guide for the ‘Ible community.

    NB — We’re totally not the first to try this, we spotted Frank Swain’s video [ youtube.com/watch?v=1BT6MU3gH80 ] from way back in 2008! But thought we’d give it a little sugru twist 🙂 ”
    http://www.instructables.com/id/Transform-your-Oyster-travelcard-with-sugru/?ALLSTEPS

  • teririch

    @Bill Lee #116

    I was curious about soemthign to do with the C Cards.

    About 2 months or so back, one of our (Kits) local homeless “Chris” was on the same bus as I was.

    He tapped in but did not tap out – telling me that once he taps in it goes in his pocket so he doesn’t lose it.

    My question…. the card will then register a 3 zone fare (daytime travel). So is there a cap on the dollar amount provided to persons on assistance of sorts?

  • teririch

    On the topic of Google Cars

    Global BC was discussing them this morning and this question came up.

    If the car is ‘driverless’ – who is liable in case of an accident?

    Google or the person sat in the car.

  • teririch

    The New York Post – May 29, 2014:

    Bike and Switch

    http://nypost.com/2014/05/29/bike-and-switch/

  • Bill

    @teririch #118

    Just speculation at this point but I would expect that like taxis it will be the owner not the passenger that is liable.

    It will be interesting if New York succumbs to lobbying or lets bike share die a natural death. Perfect example of top down central planning where the starting point is what people should want, not what they think they want. Let’s hope that city council sees the failures around the world and just drops the whole idea.

  • Norman

    Why doesn’t someone analyze Mayor Corrigan’s voting on Translink funding? If I remember correctly, he has stood in the way of every funding proposal.

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