Metro Vancouver’s board intends to shine a brighter spotlight on challenges like road congestion and the growing pains from port expansion this year.
A new transportation committee has been created that will be chaired by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts. …
The province’s plan to replace the Massey Tunnel is another topic Watts expects will be tackled.
“What does that look like on the impact for the region?” she asked. “Are there better ways and better synergies and things we can work on collectively together?”
Delta Mayor Lois Jackson, the committee’s vice-chair, said it won’t duplicate the work of the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation, which is part of the TransLink governance structure but can only approve or reject significant tax hikes.
“With all due respect to TransLink, they’ve been scrambling around trying to put buses out there and not making any major analysis of what we’ve got and what we need,” Jackson said.
“TransLink hasn’t even begun to look at things like the Massey Tunnel. Why? Because it’s not their jurisdiction.”
Emphasis mine.
And a good reason for the next provincial government to scrap the current governance arrangement for TransLink – perhaps to make regional transportation a function of Metro, as considered at the time of the orginal formation of TransLink. The politicians who raise the taxes have to be involved in the policy decisions that shape the region.
