Is Surrey is being badly shortchanged on transit?
Is Surrey being shortchanged on transit?
The entire area, South of the Fraser River, has been shortchanged with public transit and still being shortchanged with current transit planning. TransLink's myopic 1950's style of planning doesn't include, nor want to include proven modern public transit technique, such as modern LRT and its cousin Tramtrain.
Tramtrain, a development of modern LRT, allows a tram (or streetcar) to operate not just on its own rights-of-ways, but track-share with mainline railways. Reminiscent of the earlier 'interurbans', Tramtrain allows modern LRT to penetrate areas, which would be otherwise unable to sustain a 'rail' service.
There is no density issue with Tramtrain!
First perfected in Germany in the early 90's, Tramtrain is now operating in over 20 cities around the world, with many more being planned, but not in Metro Vancouver, where TransLink has invented contrived rules to omit Tramtrain, even when Rail for the Valley and Leewood projects released a professional study that showed that a 20 minute service (trains operating at 20 minute headways in each direction) from Scott Road SkyTrain station to Chilliwack could be obtained for about $500 million or for $1 billion, a grand Vancouver/Richmond to Rosedale Tramtrain could be built.
But TransLink refuses to play saying that unless the proposed 'rail' transit can operate at a 10 minute headways, they are not interested.
With this grand ignorance, TransLink has shortchanged Surrey and the South Fraser Region of viable light rail, built at a cost that would be $400 million to $900 million cheaper than the now approved SkyTrain Evergreen Line and will continue to shortchange Surrey and the South Fraser Region in the future.
The failure of TransLink, its board, bureaucrats and politicians to grasp 21st century public transit philosophy means Surrey will always get second prize in the rapid transit sweepstakes!
Guest column: Surrey is being badly shortchanged on transit
By Stephanie Ryan, The Province
Public transportation has become a key issue in many Metro Vancouver civic elections, but nowhere is the lack of ser-vice more acute than in Surrey.
Surrey has become a have-not city when it comes to public transit. Residents are understandably fed up with abysmal service.
We are not prepared to wait any longer. It's time to get our fair share. For two decades Surrey has been growing at an unbelievable pace of over 10,000 new residents each year. But transit — like schools, hospitals and other infrastructure — has not kept pace.
Surrey has become the poor cousin in TransLink negotiations, and receives only 25 to 30 per cent of the service received by communities north of the Fraser.
This is unfair. Data on growth shows that Surrey has grown at nearly three times the rate of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster since 1986, when those cities first welcomed the opening of SkyTrain.
Even with the newest two-cent-per-litre gas tax, which Surrey council proudly boasts will allocate 45 per cent of new bus service hours to the city, Surrey will receive very little, dollar for dollar, compared with communities north of the Fraser.
The Evergreen Line to the Tri-Cities, with a population half that of Surrey, is expected to cost $1.4 billion while the new bus service for Surrey will cost about $194 million — less than 10 per cent of Trans-Link's gas-tax plan.
Not only do Surrey residents receive less service, we have to pay more than our counterparts to the north. Surrey residents will pay the same extra two cents per litre as everyone else but are more reliant on their cars and have to drive greater distances. Add to that the fact that TransLink has added an additional fare zone for those who cross the river into Surrey and that all three bridges leading north over the river are expected to be tolled in the years ahead.
It's a triple whammy for Surrey that applies nowhere else in B.C.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts chaired the TransLink Mayors Council for a year but failed to fix any of the funding inequities.
Meanwhile, her Surrey First councillors nod along, toeing the line, gratefully accepting whatever TransLink happens to throw their way. That just isn't good enough.
Surrey residents can no longer afford to wait with Watts as she dithers over transit service. We have been paying into TransLink for years without receiving our fair share of service. It is time to start playing catch-up with those cities that receive many more service hours per capita than we do.
Whether it's tolls, gas taxes, fare zones or a proposed vehicle levy, it is time Surrey reaped the rewards of a system we have been paying into all along.
Surrey residents should reasonably expect their city council to take a more aggressive stance at the Trans-Link bargaining table, pursuing an expansion of bus service, express bus service and light-rail service now – not just when it is politically convenient.
In politics, you get what you negotiate and that means taking risks, being bold, building alliances and not accepting "no" for an answer, particularly when the people you represent are being treated as unfairly as Surrey residents.
What does Surrey need? More tough negotiating with the province and fewer celebrity "love-ins" with world leaders.
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Stephanie Ryan is a council candidate for the Surrey Civic Coalition.
