The National Post, not surprisingly, picked up on an angle not covered elsewhere:
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For transit planners in cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto, all facing huge and expensive transit needs, the important question, then, is why did Vancouver fail?
Vancouver voters were asked whether they supported a 0.5 per cent addition to the provincial sales tax, which would raise $250 million annually toward TransLink’s 10-year plan to generate $7.5 billion for expanded service
Gordon Price, the director of the City Institute at Simon Fraser University, and a prominent backer of the yes side in the Vancouver plebiscite, says now the very idea itself was flawed.
“If you really believe regions have to move forward, referendums are expensive and destructive,” he said.
Price believes the overwhelming no vote will bolster those across Canada who would prefer municipal governments not invest in big projects at all.
“From the point of view of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Fraser Institute and the C.D. Howe Institute and all the rest of that apparatus, what a winner!” Price said.
“You got people in Vancouver, for God’s sake, to vote against transit. You slayed the green dragon in its own den. They’ll be looking around for the next opportunity.”
Not everyone believes the Vancouver process itself was to blame, though.
“The way the referendum was structured was almost a gift to the yes side,” said Brian Kelcey, a urban governance consultant in Toronto.
Kelcey thinks other cities could win transit votes linked to taxes and infrastructure. But they’d have to go about it very differently.
“I don’t think it’s hopeless,” he said. To get there, transit advocates would have to design plans that had wins for everybody, including commuters, transit riders and the rest, before they went to the voters, he said. “If that happens, I think you’ve got a better shot.”
At the same time, Kelcey does think the Vancouver result — a resounding no, not just in the region as a whole, but in every individual municipality — should give pause to those who back a high-density, transit-first vision of Canadian city building.
“If you’re speaking to the urbanist movement, in other words, people who tend to support different kinds of mobility in cities, people who support density in cities, city planners, people who tend to think in terms of Canada’s future being defined in terms of our cities, this was clearly a defeat,” he said.
“There needs to be a challenging of the assumption that the urbanist vision of how cities should work is inevitable.” ….
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A similar sentiment has been expressed by some of our commenters (see Bob here): the referendum is also a rejection of the compact region, complete communities, transit-oriented development – the basics of smart growth, new urbanism, TOD, etc. And hence, we get Motordom by default. Live with it.
But is that the right conclusion? We’ll find out if that becomes the rationale for wiping off the TransLink agenda everything but mass transit and roads. In other words, the de-funding of bike routes, pedestrian programs, supportive urban design, and land-use coordination with Metro and municipalities based on what is now considered an irrelevant regional plan.
