A MEMO TO PREMIER EBY

The Honourable David Eby, Premier of BC

Dear Premier Eby,

The ongoing rift between Canada and the USA will have generational effects and will never go back to normal, as President Trump has forever changed how people behave. Trump and MAGA is a prelude for great change in BC.

The ongoing climate change with summer’s heat dome and subsequent wild fires shows we cannot go back to normal.

The now annual atmospheric rivers resulting in massive floods and land slides, demonstrates we cannot go back to normal.

Metro Vancouver’s regional transit system has been greatly affected by events since 2020, as thousands of of people have changed their travel habits with many either working or studying from home. This has put a massive finical strain on TransLink, which now claims huge annual deficits.

TransLink seemed OK operating empty buses, without any hint of a “plan B” for attracting new ridership. TransLink is now asking the provincial and federal governments for more money to to service its continued declining ridership, at the same time and to keep huge executive salaries being paid.

TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit with their pet $4 billion, 5.6 km Broadway subway  and their $6 billion+, 16 km extension to the Expo a Line, despite clear evidence that both projects are nothing more than “gold-plated” prestige projects, have all but bankrupted TransLink. Both projects, designed to further the profits of land speculators and land developers who support many of the mayors at election time. Both projects will only improve transit on paper and nothing more.

The proposed Broadway subway is being built on a route without enough ridership to justify its construction and the flip flop from LRT to light-metro in Surrey, will be again be built on a route where the ridership will not justify construction costs. An estimate of $100 million annually for increased operating costs, which translates to increased annual subsidies for both projects, has not been budgeted for.

The so called “business cases” for these two transit projects were a sham and continues the practice of business cases in BC being politcal documents and not technical documents!

Questionable ridership projections are based on future condo tower development, based on foreign investment and this is not guaranteed! The already huge cost does not include the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro (erroneously called SkyTrain) cars, nor the inflationary cost increases for cement and specialty steel, needed for subway and viaduct construction.

NEWS FLASH: TransLink’s ridership dropped 1.5% in 2025!

It is no secret that the often renamed and now called Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM), as used on the Expo and Millennium Lines is obsolete, as it has been obsolete since the late 1980’s, being more expensive to build, maintain and operate than its chief competitor, light rail.

Only seven such systems have been built in the past 50 years, with only six still in operation and only two are seriously used for urban transit. despite the system being rebranded six times!

Today, modern light-metro systems such as Ottawa and Seattle use light rail vehicles, because of their cost effectiveness and their ability to operate on lesser rights-of-ways, yet because MALM uses Linear Induction Motors, it is impossible to use LRV’s on the proprietary MALM system.

MALM cannot be built cheaply, nor can it be operated and maintained cheaply. The taxpayer pays a first class cost for a second class system and this cannot continue in the future.

The recent sale of Bombardier to Alstom puts into question the future availability of MALM cars and spare parts! Production of niche transit systems like the proprietary MALM light metro, maybe discontinued. Alstom has already shown that it has little use for proprietary transit systems by discontinuing production of the TVR guided bus used in several European cities, leaving operators scrambling for spare parts.

Alstom has offered for sale the MALM production site in Kingston Ontario, with the all important test track; the CNR has applied for the abandonment of the spur line for the production facility.

Vancouver is now the only customer for MALM, as the systems built in Korea and Malaysia have mired Bombardier and SNC Lavalin (the patent holders of the proprietary railway) in legal misadventure, due in part, to healthy “success fees” paid to lobbyists and politicians, to ensure MALM was to be built!

The Broadway subway and the Expo Line extension to Langley extensions to the SkyTrain light-metro system are grossly overpriced for what they will do as light ridership on both extensions will greatly increase operating costs. Broadway, current peak hour transit customer flows are under 4,000 persons per hour per direction (pphpd). The North American standard for building a subway is a transit route with customer flows of at least 15,000 pphpd and operational subsidies increase dramatically with smaller customer flows.

Despite deliberate and misleading statements by TransLink and the City of Vancouver, Broadway is not the busiest transit corridor in Canada, as a representative of TransLink stated in a letter, Broadway was “our region’s most over crowded bus route“

TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit have never been honest with the long term costs of the project, which over a fifty year period, will have grave implications for the metro Vancouver and BC taxpayers.

According to the Toronto Transit Commission, who have a long experience operating subways, the Broadway subway to Arbutus, alone, will add over $40 million annually to TransLink’s operating costs.

The fifty year costs for subways and grade separated transit are staggering, estimated more than $1 billion per km for the subway portion and just under $600 million per km for the elevated sections of the light metro system. Already the original Expo Line desperately needs a minimum $2 billion to rehab (full rehab about $3 billion) the system and increase capacity beyond Transport Canada’s Operating Certificate maximum of 15,000 pphpd.

TransLink has ignored these costs, for fear of pointed questions about the massive future costs including tax increases.

The following is the 50 year costs of various transit modes, by Ontario’s MetroLinx.

Spending $16 billion for 21.7 km of light-metro pales, when one could instead invest under $2 billion on both, the proposed Fraser Valley Rail project reinstating a  130km Vancouver to Chilliwack passenger service and $4 billion rehabbing the E&N, reinstating a Victoria to Courtney 183 km passenger service and still have $10 billion left over to invest in regional transit projects in Metro Vancouver and beyond.

The current economic crisis will create long term financial hardships for taxpayers, not just TransLink. Even though there are generous government support, TransLink and its ossified bureaucracy still squanders monies on questionable projects, instead of improving the core service.

The taxpayer will very soon, be in no mood, to fund Metro Vancouver’s gold-plated, prestige transit projects, nor will the taxpayer and the transit user be willing to pay higher fares and other taxes for transit that about 85% of the population will not use.

As Premier, you must step in and say “enough” as TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit have isolated themselves from public oversight and ignore public debate.

In 2015, 62% percent of the people voted against TransLink’s demands for money, yet they have done nothing but play the taxpayer and voter for fools by offering virtually the same plan with no real public input. TransLink’s public oversight is nothing but a charade; a smokescreen to carry on with their hugely expensive rapid transit agenda.

In our current economic climate, TransLink must plan for affordable transit projects; build user friendly transit projects and refrain from doing the same expensive thing over and over again hoping for different results.

TransLink needs to rethink its planning; the Mayor’s Council on Transit needs to rethink how transit is provided and funded; and the provincial government must rethink its rubber stamping Metro Vancouver’s questionable transit planning.

The taxpayer and the transit customer deserve far better than the current sham planning, complete lack of oversight and failure to correct the current mess maybe felt at the polls in the next election three years hence.

After 40 years, the taxpayer is still held hostage to expensive and myopic light-metro planning, based largely on an obsolete light metro system.