The Fare Evasion Game – Let’s Not Deal with The Real Transit Issues!
What is interesting about this story is that there were only 440 respondents to TransLink’s survey, which is hardly a drop in the bucket compare to the numbers of passengers using the transit system on a daily basis.
Why is this so?
Well two answers come to mind;
- The vast majority of people use the car instead of transit and fare hikes mean little or nothing.
- A large portion of TransLink’s riders have discounted fares already, such as the U-Pass and a general fare hike doesn’t hit the pocket book very hard.
If one legitimately can use concession fares using transit, theAi??fare is still quite reasonable, but where the fare increases will hurt are those paying full fare.
Sadly, one has not much faithAi??with Martin Crilly,Ai??TransLink’sAi??Transit Commissioner, as he has little expertise in public transit and this lack of knowledge in the 1990’s, helped build the Millennium Line, which has distinguished itself by doing relatively little, except lumber the taxpayer with about $1.2 billion and growing, in public debt.
Respondents to the questions tend to ridicule TransLink and its employees illustrating the sad state of affairs within TransLink itself. Sadly, nothing will change because no one really cares about public transit, except when a multi billion dollar metro line is opened, then watch all the political glad handing at ribbon cutting time.
The real issue is TransLink itself, something that TransLink’s over paid bureaucratsAi??will not deal with and the provincial government just hasn’t the politicalAi??courage to make changes to TransLink, especially when it was the provincial Liberals, especially one Kevin Falcon, who made the last round of disastrous changes to TransLink.
The Ship of Fools sails on!
