From the excellent summary written by Caelie Framption – just in case this gets missed. It provides an important perspective, highlighted in bold.
TransLink’s 2014 Base Plan
Mayors’ Council, September 26; Transportation Committee, October 9
The TransLink Mayors’ Council was presented with the 2014 TransLink Base Plan on September 26th, raising concerns about the transit authority’s financial decisions and the state of the TransLink Board.
TransLink’s Executive Vice President, Strategic Planning and Public Affairs at TransLink, Bob Paddon said that with no new revenue sources, the transit authority will be at 2004 levels of service in 2020. The 2014 Base Plan shows no new service hours.
The Base Plan demonstrated that not only is the transit authority short of funds for expansion but that expected revenues are not coming in. The Base Plan says confirms: “current funding levels cannot keep pace with the targets set out in the Regional Transportation Strategy.”
As Clark Williams-Darry from the Sightline Institute explained: “…when gasoline and toll revenues don’t show up, but debt service obligations keep coming, everything else gets squeezed. Transit in particular has been on the chopping block over the last two years.”
The Metro Vancouver Transportation Committee turned down approving the Base Plan. However, this is a symbolic vote because Mayors’ Council doesn’t have a formal means to influence or amend a Base Plan.
Some may try to frame a no vote on the referendum as a maintenance of the status quo. We’ll have to live with what we got, and spend existing taxes more wisely.
Not so. With no prospect of a new revenues and a continuing drop in gas taxes, TransLink would have to begin the process of cutting back aggressively over time; new growth would add more pressure. The result: 2004 levels of service in six years.
It must surely becoming clearer to Victoria that such a scenario would be intolerable – and lead to a new political issue that would unite otherwise disparate forces, increasing with severity as cutbacks occur. Is that not seen as a problem – at least for the local Liberal MLAs? Does the Premier consider the threat inconsequential?
It would really be interesting to know the rationale behind this referendum, and the political calculations involved. Fell free to speculate.
with no new revenue sources, the transit authority will be at 2004 levels of service in 2020
That is if you agree to the base plan definition of “level of service”:
level of service=transit serviice hour/inhabitant
By this metric, the transit service between Richmond and Vancouver, is already far worse than in 2004:
at the time of the 98B, it was 280hrs of transit service/days, when ithere is only 220hrs of transit service/day with the Canada line.
I am pretty sure, you all regret the good all day of the 98B…
The biggest flaw of the Base plan is to equate Transit level of service with transit vehicle revenue hour…
from that point, all the rest of the discussion become irrelevant.
I have to admit that I’m pretty naive politically, but it seems pretty plausible to me that the Liberals could consider transit users to be predominantly left-leaning voters and motorists are predominantly right-leaning voters. If so, then they have nothing to gain from promoting transit. It would certainly explain why we’ve been growing so many hectares of asphalt these last few terms.
I don’t know whether that analysis actually true or not, but either way I think that something needs to be done to convince the Liberals (and their supporters!) that transit is in their best interests…
typo Clark Williams-Derby should be Clark Williams-Derry
“… Liberals could consider transit users to be predominantly left-leaning voters and motorists are predominantly right-leaning voters.”
Even if true (which it’s not, of course) therein lies the irony, on so many levels. To not support transit as needed now will lead only to more congestion, pollution etc., and ultimately backfire politically, but with a huge financial burden. Anyone who’s lived in a major city, such as London or Paris, knows transit users span the political spectrum. These days I can’t imagine anyone from the (UK) broker belt not taking the train. Unless they’re in the Chip Wilson one percent. Or want to cycle, of course…
I’m interested to see how the funding conundrum plays out. Now they are faced with reduced revenue from road and fuel taxes which is leaving them with a shortfall to maintain their integrated transport network. This goes back to one of the key messages in James Kunstlers book ‘The Long Emergency’. Contemporary society has been set up around a system of consumption where ever greater volumes of consumption are required to pay down the debt of the original consumption. Once you reduce consumption there is no revenue to service the debts of past decisions. This is why politicians seem to be blind to the choices that seem smart from a sustainability perspective. Its not that they are ignorant but they are evaluating the price the electorate is willing to pay. Lower consumption equals high unemployment and lower standards of living. The automobile industry makes up around a third of the economy so once that is removed the consequences are obvious.