Referendum: The Outsider’s Perspective

The following is by Greg Vann, a planning consultant from Brisbane, who makes an important point: If Vancouver votes against funding transit, “what hope does that leave for the rest of us?”*  

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The transit referendum: an outsider’s view.

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I love Vancouver. I have been coming here regularly for over a decade, and am currently spending a two month sabbatical here. I first started visiting because, as an urban planner, it’s a good place to understand more about how to build great cities. Now I just like to visit and be in the city.

It is such a great place. It has made the most of its spectacular setting. It has also made a lot of smart decisions along the way about how people can get around and the sorts of communities you can live and work in. The result is one of the world’s most liveable cities.

But here’s the thing: I’m amazed that a community that has such a great track record of leading transport and planning thinking and practice could seriously be considering curtailing its transit funding and winding back its levels of service. And yet I find it is, in the form of the upcoming referendum about just that.

Vancouver is a model held up by other cities around the world about how to get the balance of transport systems right, and how to match that up with land use involving density and high quality neighbourhoods. Early decisions not to build freeways through the downtown was the foundation. The systematic development of the Skytrain network, improved bus systems, and more recently bike infrastructure, is built on this foundation.

And so, your region continues to set an example for others, from the West End, where you can get pretty much everywhere without a car (as I am doing on this extended stay), to intense mixed use communities springing up around transit all over, from False Creek to New Westminster to Richmond and Surrey. Even a small community like Port Moody has built some great places ahead of the Evergreen line arriving, and Coquitlam is planning big changes too.

Brisbane, where I live, has a similar regional population and growth rate to this region. At a State Government Growth Summit in 2011, Queensland’s then Premier, Anna Bligh, asked the audience about where else to look for ideas about how to handle Brisbane’s growth. The first and most popular response was Vancouver, and she and others subsequently came here to do that.

From my perspective, the referendum is not just about how you get around. Transport is an equity issue. One reason Vancouver is so admired by others is because it gives people living in many of its communities genuine choices about how to get to where they want to go. While other cities export their urban poor to their fringes, your outer urban community of Surrey has a great plan to tie that community together by light rail.

Vancouver is a multi modal city. Different trips can be made by a range of travel types. This means that for people who can’t afford or can’t drive a car, there are real options to be available. And that’s what seems to be on offer for your future as the population continues its strong growth, at the cost a 0.5% increase in sales tax. Looks like a bargain to me.

But it seems that the legacy that has made Vancouver the envy of many other cities is under challenge by the upcoming referendum on transit funding. I get the feeling that this is being characterised as a vote of confidence in your transport agency Translink. (By the way, Queensland called its transit agency Translink too, after Vancouver’s). Of course, government agencies like most organisations, can always do better. But from where I stand, the referendum is actually about whether you, as a community, want to carry forward the successful recipe for great city building you have “home grown” and shown the world how; or whether you want to head down the path of many other cities around the world who envy you.

Sure, I’m an outsider and you might think it is none of my business I guess, but Vancouver, I’m not sure you realise how good you’ve got it. I hope you don’t mess that up. If a leading region like Vancouver that has long been an inspiration for transport thinking around the world can no longer get its transit funding act together, what hope does that leave for the rest of us?

The world is watching!”

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* It will certainly send a message to every politician, certainly in the rest of Canada if not beyond, that no matter how essential transit is to the growth of your city and region, it’s a loser at the ballot box if you actually have to raise revenue to pay for it.  All the opposition has to do is discredit your transit agency.