Another letter the media ignores
Another letter from a friend of Rail for the Valley,Ai??which the mainstream media wish to ignore.
HereAi??is the problem with our current financial transit debacle, very few, if any in the region understandsAi??what SkyTrain is and why the Vancouver region has it. Most politicos just repeat TransLink’s bumf ad nauseoum!
SkyTrain, both the Expo and Millennium Lines and the Canada Line were forced on the taxpayer by the provincial government. There were NO honest studies done, rather it was simply; “you are going to get SkyTrain whether you like it or not.“, from the premier of the day.
When SkyTrain was first forced on the region, alarm bells went off with transit experts elsewhere, with the majority foretelling of major financial difficulties down the road if we continued to build with the proprietary Skytrain light-metro. Today, like days past, civic and provincial politicians remain blind, deaf and dumb about regional rail transit and many seem to delight in bringing in more onerous taxes upon us.
There is no Robin Hood in this tale, rather the evil Sheriff is shaking the last ‘groat‘ from the tenants and no one seems to care.
Just a reminder, to date the taxpayer has paid over $8 billion for two Skytrain lines and one truncated metro line, plus the metro system is subsidized by over $250 million annually!
It is time to say adiA?s to SkyTrain, only there isn’t a politician with the moral fibre to do so!
The Editor;
“Vancouver is adopting a non-commercial approach…….I hope they have lots of money.”; Norman Thompson, CBE, FCA, ACMA, English transit consultant and builder of the worlds busiest subway, on the BC Government’s choice for SkyTrain instead of LRT in 1980.
Save us from politicians who think of themselves transit experts and think transit problems can be solved by merely increasing taxes. The current fiscal fiasco with TransLink can be traced back to the SkyTrain mini-metro system and TransLink’s love affair with SkyTrain instead of much cheaper, just as effective light rail. The region has spent about six times more for SkyTrain than if LRT had been built instead and what we have got for our SkyTrain investment is a Pandora’s Box of expenses. Modern LRT is much cheaper to build; much cheaper to operate than SkyTrain, with the added bonus that LRT has a higher capacity than Skytrain!
Can’t our politicians read? LRT is superior to Skytrain, that is why no one buys SkyTrain today!
Adding more taxes and user fees will not improve regional transit, in fact it will exacerbate the situation as SkyTrain has an insatiable appetite for money. Building the Skytrain Evergreen Line will only drive up taxes, which will in turn need more tax money and user fees to maintain.
We need to completely rethink how and why we provide transit, as current politically-correct thinking is leading us to a massive tax fiasco. In Europe, successful transit systems put the customer first and design transit routes to accommodate the customer not political and academic dogma.
If we really want to change how transit is operated and financed, we must rid ourselves of TransLink and it archaic mini-metro mentality and then put an end to hugely expensive Skytrain mini-metro. Hard medicine, but the right prescription.
