Liz James asks important questions
Liz James, who writes opinion pieces for the North Shore News, asks some ‘striking’ questions of the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation, the question is; “are they willing to answer?“
The answer is no, as the regional mayors are afraid of a referendum and the reason is simple, they are afraid of a “none of the above” answer.
Why?
Again, the answer is simple, pie in the sky transit projects; grossly under performing transit lines; and questionable planning practices would halt as the transit authority would be forced (kicking and screaming) to cut its cloth to match its income. If a “none of the above” option wins, Translink would have to say goodbye to its reason d’etre to exist, as SkyTrain is the ‘bread and butter‘ of the transit authority and its employees.
Next, a few unequivocal words for the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation: Please, unless you are willing to include a “none of the above” option, no more surveys that ask taxpayers how they would like to remit the lint in their pockets to TransLink.
We’re on a sit-down strike – period.
On strike until you commission an ethical, unbiased cost-benefit comparison of SkyTrain versus light-rail transit – and not by Bombardier or SNC-Lavalin.
On strike, until an audit reveals the latest use-and-abuse costs of the U-Pass program.
And on strike until the province shoulders its responsibility for decision-making by filling its voting seats on the TransLink Board.
Until those conditions are met, taxpayers are no longer willing to be prey to TransLink’s version of the Stockholm syndrome – prey under its spendthrift thumb despite the comforting clichAi??s about sustainability and the greater good.
.Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/technology/Take+risk+difficult+questions/8579905/story.html#ixzz2XLiUA0wU
Why do you say our transit lines are “grossly under performing”? Skytrain has the 10th highest ridership of metro systems in North America, and 16/20 cities on the list have greater populations than Vancouver. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership
Zweisystem replies: First, our SkyTrain lines double count bus riders as they are forced (forced transfer) from bus to mini-metro. Translink has admitted that over 80% of SkyTrain’s ridership first takes a bus. This is a very poor statistic because what is not told is that SkyTrain has not attracted much new ridership and ridership has grown only with population growth.
In the 21st century the success of a new transit line is modal shift, or put another way, has our investment in transit created a modal shift? Metro Vancouver’s statistics show that there has been no noticeable modal shift from car to transit. This means our mini-metro investment has been wasted and it would have been a cheaper option just to let the transit customers remain on the bus.
Our mini-metro system has put Translink into a financial bind, yet for all the investment made to date (over $8 billion) there has been no real payback.
If TransLink were honest, they would say, yes SkyTrain carries a lot of ridership, but that ridership is made up mostly of bus riders forced to transfer onto the train. We have failed to provide a customer friendly transit service, that will attract the car driver from the car.
What about the poorly-performing TriMet LRT system in Portland? The ridership on the entire system is less than that for the Canada line alone, and I don’t believe that everyone is within walking distance of the lrt lines. Indeed, last time I stayed in Portland, I was on densely-populated Hawthorne, by the Baghdad theatre, and there was no LRT there to speak of! I had to take the bus to and from the city centre on every trip. Many of them might be taking a bus too. Portland is always a good comparison for Vancouver because of the similarly-sized population.
Zweisystem replies: Comparing two different cities is rather an apples and oranges comparison, but the MAX light rail has probably attracted more new customers than Skytrain as the vast majority of SkyTrain ridership is recycled bus riders. Put the MAX system in Vancouver and ridership would probably exceed that of SkyTrain.
Can you cite any sources on that?
Zwiesystem replies: Since very few bus services connected with Portland’s MAX, most ridership was new ridership to the transit system. Translink and Metro Vancouver stats show very little “new” ridership on Skytrain, rather ridership has kept pace with population growth. The first MAX line was built in place of a highway, not so with the Expo Line, which follows the ghost rails of the Central Park interurban line.