Ken Hardie, a now-retired communications staffer for TransLink, is responding regularly to Price Tags posts – specifically, the one immediately below this that quotes a White Rock resident who sees the Broadway corridor as a Vancouver problem.
I’m pulling out his comments in case they’re otherwise missed, but mainly because he articulates so well an essential point: a transportation system is a network, where every element from left-turn bays and traffic signals to transit vehicles and radio traffic reports are all necessary for the network to operate.
In short, it’s never roads versus transit. Nor Vancouver versus White Rock.
Here are his full remarks:
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It is indeed tempting to consider Broadway corridor issues as ‘Vancouver’s problem’, especially if you live elsewhere in the sprawling Metro Vancouver region. The same could be said (and has been, many times) that drivers don’t really care very much about transit services and especially don’t care much about the idea of helping to pay for them.
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I had the principal of a car dealership write to me on that last point, and I responded that while it was true that he didn’t ever use transit, his taxes were paying for roads that he also never used, but without which ‘his roads’ wouldn’t work. Looking at the transportation system on its own, we have to consider it as a network, where every element from left-turn bays and traffic signals to transit vehicles and radio traffic reports are all necessary for the network to operate.
If you look at ‘peak hour’ traffic flows, transit buses make up two per cent of traffic across the Lions Gate Bridge but carry 28 per cent of the people making that crossing. The ratio reported for the Massey Tunnel is one per cent buses and 26 per cent of commuters – again in the peak period. Clearly, those who need to drive benefit from the road space cleared up by transit.
An examination of the Broadway corridor expands this. A great many of our regional medical specialist services are located along the corridor and, as BC’s ‘second downtown’, so are many other businesses and agencies that provide for the whole region. So, while individuals from White Rock, Langley, North Van or Pitt Meadows might have no obvious stake in how well that corridor works, their neighbours very well could.
Mr. Hardie is correct, of course. But his argument is premised on the concept that there is a “greater good” and a “larger picture” of benefit to society.
It all reminds me of the childless couple fuming at having to pay (through taxes) for schools. “Why should I pay for something that I don’t need?”. In the larger picture, of course, education is fundamental to the success of all corners our society.
Indirectly, everyone benefits from education, as they do from transit. But too many can’t really see that far or that deeply.
Thanks for reposting this comment from Mr. Hardie. A thoughtful response!
The network effect induces congestion in cars, but great coverage for transit.
More car-space on roads induces more demand, congesting the system and making it worse for all users. More bus-space (and buses) also induces more demand for transit, adding part-paying users, making more efficient use of each bus, and allowing buses to run more frequently, making it better for all users.
In fact, the same could be said of cycling and walking: more ‘users’ of those modes means safety in numbers, bustle, life. If “congested” then extending space for those users (doubling sidewalk and bike lane widths, increasing the sidewalk and bikelane network) makes your city more pleasant.
It seems to me that cars are the only one of the four main transport modes which has negative network effects.
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So users of any mode but the car have most reason to be upset about translink dollars being spent elsewhere. It is not the whiterock driver who should be upset about broadway transit, but the transit user who should be upset about whichever of whiterock’s major road network is maintainted by Translink. That’s the poor ROI investment.