TransLink CEO, Ian Jarvis Strikes Back
Irked with the Vancouver provinces editorial about Translink and the proposed 2 cent a litre gas tax to fund the Evergreen Line, TransLink's CEO, Ian Jarvis sent an angry letter to the Province.
TransLink's progress
By Ian Jarvis, The Province JulyRead more: http://www.theprovince.com/TransLink+progress/5159297/story.html#ixzz1TE21EMZl
TransLink takes exception to the way in which your editorial of July 22 claims that we should do more with resources that have been entrusted to us. It is true that our total revenues and costs have increased in the past few years, but you neglected to recognize that in turn, we made a significant investment in roads and our transit system during the same period.
The improvements are substantial: the Canada Line went into operation, the Golden Ears Bridge opened, we increased bus service by 19 per cent across the region, we added 48 new SkyTrain vehicles to our fleet and invested significant dollars in other road improvement projects. A more telling comparison would be our cost per revenue passenger, which decreased from $4.04 in 2009 to $3.98 in 2010 in spite of rising fuel costs.
Moving Forward, our regional supplemental plan is based on direct feedback from the public, who have requested more service and increased infrastructure maintenance. Delivering the plan requires additional resources, which are substantial. However, the cost of not continuing to invest means increased congestion, longer commute times, larger GHG emissions and more overcrowding on transit.
Ian Jarvis, CEO, TransLink
What Mr. Jarvis didn't say is that despite the hype and hoopla about the Canada Line, it hasn't taken cars off the road, in fact about 70% of the extra bus service added to Delta was withdrawn after a year because expected ridership did not materialize. Speaking of South Delta, there are three bus routes which run at an hourly or better service which carry in total less than 20 persons a day – why?
We wish we can believe Mr. Jarvis, but TransLink's record on flim-flam is well known, the tall tales that come out of TransLink's 'ivory towers' on Kingsway is breathtaking. For example, TransLink would have us believe that modern LRT can carry only 10,000 persons per hour per direction and streetcars even less, while in Karlsruhe Germany, one route on the city tramway sees a massive capacity of over 40,000 pphpd during peak hours. The transportation authority wasn't boasting about this, rather giving it as an example to relocate the tram route in a subway and rightly so.
TransLink's Broadway rapid transit gong-show is more of the same, dated and arcane planning that doesn't solve transportation problems, rather exacerbates congestion and gridlock and at ever higher prices for the car driver.
I am sorry Mr. Jarvis, your rant has fallen on deaf ears as over a decade of incompetence has made TransLink a laughing stock. Transclunk, as one blog commentator calls the organization, needs to be replaced, by a organization which will design public transportation for both the 21st century and the transit customer. To date, TransLink has done neither.
