B.C. premier orders audit of TransLink. Two important questions
B.C. premier orders audit of TransLink, but will it be the right sort of audit?
Will the BC Auditor General do the Audit?
Will it be a value for money audit?
Two important questions that must be answered before anyAi??credenceAi??is given to Premier Clark’s call for an audit of TransLink.
TransLink is auditedAi??on an annual basis, butAi??this is merely to see if moneyAi??collected forAi??TransLink is spent correctly and gives no indication of actual performance. TransLink’s auditor, does not independently checkAi??ridership, nor does it do a value for service audit, but just insures that TransLink’s numbers add up.
What is needs to be audited is:
- An independent auditAi??of ridership.
- An audit of ridership on each an every transit route.
- An audit of the U-Pass program
- An audit of the West Coast Express, Seabus, and the SkyTrain/Canada Line metro system, giving the real cost of building and operating to the taxpayer.
If the Premier’s proposed audit, is nothing more than a 2 + 2 = 4 type of audit, it will be an expensive nonevent and nothing more than a publicity stunt.
B.C. premier orders audit of TransLink
A budget shortfall spurs the call for tranportation auditBy ANDREA WOO, Vancouver SunMarch 22, 2012
B.C. Premier Christy Clark is calling for an audit of TransLink.
Photograph by: Vancouver Sun, Handout
VANCOUVER — Premier Christy Clark has ordered an audit of TransLink to address a shortfall in funding for the transportation authority.
Clark made the announcement on Thursday at the end of a Port Moody news conference supporting Liberal candidate Dennis Marsden in the April 19 Port Moody-Coquitlam byelection.
The premier had referenced a $30 million shortfall for the Evergreen Line, however it is believed she misspoke.
ai???There is still a funding gap for the Evergreen Line ai??i?? $30 million ai??i?? and we are going to find that through an audit of TransLink,ai??? Clark said.
ai???We are not going to find it through a vehicle levy or other sources; we are going to find it within TransLink.ai???
North Vancouver district Mayor Richard Walton, who chairs the mayorsai??i?? council for regional transportation, said funds for the Evergreen Line are already covered.
ai???The two cent gas tax fully funded the requirements for the Evergreen Line to go ahead, but there were a whole series of other much-needed capital improvements right away throughout the Metro Vancouver region,ai??? he said.
ai???That was the additional $30 million, for the next two years, that was going to be funded through property tax unless we can find an alternative funding source for it.ai???
Those improvement projects include a rapid bus over the Port Mann bridge and a B-Line along King George.
Metro Vancouver mayors had renewed their calls for an audit last month, saying they refuse to raise any more taxes or tolls for transit projects such as the Evergreen Line and buses south of the Fraser River until the transportation authority proves it is running efficiently.
That came after TransLink offered to give $100 to charity for every 170 stakeholders who filled out a survey on how the transportation authority communicates.
ai???When weai??i??re trying to turn over every leaf and every rock for funds … this just flies in the face of what weai??i??re trying to do,ai??? Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said at the time.
Walton said he is looking forward to connecting with the Ministry of Transportation and the Premierai??i??s office to discuss details of the audit.
ai???The challenge is, weai??i??ve got the clock ticking,ai??? he said. ai???We would be very pleased if those efficiencies could be found within TransLink, so we donai??i??t have to find the $30 million of revenue somewhere.
Clark said the province found ai???very significant savings for taxpayersai??? in an audit of BC Hydro and she expects the same for TransLink.
ai???Whenever youai??i??re looking at a big organization that spends $1 billion a year, you can find savings,ai??? she said.
There is no set date for the audit yet, but Clark said she is hopeful it will begin soon.
The $1.4 billion Evergreen Line, which will connect Coquitlam to Vancouver via Port Moody and Burnaby, is scheduled for completion in 2016.
Ha, ha, ha snookie will never have a full audit of transit because building SkyTrain is a NDP/Socred/Liberal pork barrel so their friends and cronies can slurp at the SkyTrain trough.
Ever wonder why we keep building SkyTrain at 3, 4, 5 times more than light rail, when everyone else has rejected the SkyTrain mini-metro? It is all about government friends and insiders slurp, slurp, slurping at the taxpayer’s buffet.
Now, no government wants a honest audit of TransLink, too many questions will be asked, too many embarrassing revelations will be made.
Voony does some interesting number crunching on his blog. It includes a section on Skytrain. A couple of things, he is meticulous with sources and assumptions so you can decide for yourself if you agree. A couple of points I found interesting the first is operating and maintainance costs per rider. In the early years it did not look great compared to other systems, but now that there are more riders it looks great. The other is capital costs per rider, he makes some assumptions to include the entire cost….and they seem reasonable to me…anyway worth a look and cheaper than an audit.
Voony’s numbers have always been undependable and he doesn’t include the annual $250 million subsidy that the provincial government gives to SkyTrain. When other transit agencies looked at SkyTrain, they always took into account debt servicing and SkyTrain’s now $250 million subsidy has been the determining factor.
The SkyTrain lobby, including Voony, just do not want to see the whole picture and live in a fairytale land of SkyTrain.
Perhaps you should actually read Voony’s blog as he does include debt servicing and in fact splits it out seperately…including references and assumptions…oops.
The Evergreen Line was never a project of Translnk. When the West Coast express appeared in 1995 and before that upgrading the Barnett Highway, it was turned down by B.C.Transit. The north-East sector Transportation Committee mad recomendations to B.C. Transit. The Committee was a made up by the B.C Transit Chairman Len Traboulay. The report did not mention the line or even propose it in the future.
The Lower Mainland Commuter Rail Consortium recommended that the line should start at Sapperton, and folow the C.P.R. line to Coquitlam Center Transit Station. This is where the population growth is, not Port Moody.
The running time for a West Coast express train from Port moody to Coquitlam Center is 8 minutes. When the C.P.R. signed the agreement it was for two hour in the A.M and two hours in the P.M. That means we could load people in the A.M at Port Moody and take them either direction. To Vancouver or to Coquitlam Center for transfers.
Same in the P.M. The agreement does not state what direction the trains run in, Translink sets those. It is a track lease contract.
The committe had six recommendations approved ! H.O.V. lanes on the freeway. 2 A Skytrain line from Edmonds thru Sappeerton to Lougheed Mall and to join at Commercial Drive with the Expo Line. 3 Upgrading of the freeway by 2014 to make it a Corridor with no level crossings for high speed rail and widening. 4 a bridge linking Maple Ridge to langley suitable for a light rail line between the two in the future. 5 The Canada Line. 6 a feasibility study of a light rail line from Sapperton to Coquitlam Center.
The Evergreen line was discussed and turned down because of failed engineering reports going from Lougheed mall to Burquitlam on a grade deemed to steep for rail of any kind. Atunnel concept was looked at but recommended by a S.F.U geography Professor the rock formation is not stable on the east slope. I still feel today the Sapperton-Coquitlam line was never give a chance by Translink. They are a very poor replacement for B.C.Transit.
Funny thing is, not many transit types outside the SkyTrain lobby read Voony and those who have, dismiss him, sorry. We can all take figures and make them say what we want them to say. But if LRT could have been built for 1/3rd the cost or 1/2 the cost of SkyTrain and carry the same ridership, would have much superior numbers. And with at-grade transit proven to attract more new ridership than grade separated transit, the ridership stats would make SkyTrain look like a very poor second choice. Here we have the crux of the situation; TransLink’s fear of LRT and superior performance would make their SkyTrain planning look very silly indeed.
I tend to agree.
We could build the full build RftV/Leewood Vancouver/Richmond to Chilliwack TramTrain and build TramTrain from Vancouver to Coquitlam, for less money than the current Evergreen Line.
The concern that I and other commentators have is the independence, veracity & reliability of Voony’s writing, some of Voony’s postings on the Metro Vancouver Transit Skyscraper discussion group have been scripted in order to boost the Translink/Skytrain image.
In 2010, two individuals, more or less admitted that they were paid by Translink or the then BC Liberal administration to post pro-Translink views on the discussion board.
You can read what you like, but IMHO Voony and his peers are pushing a very partisan agenda
Amazing how much slagging goes on with no one from apparently bothering to go to look themselves. For Zei, I doubt many people read his blog, almost certainly fewer than RftV, that is a shame because he is one of the most insiteful, unbiased bloggers out there despite the need for a proof reader. It also should be noted he is very good at noting his sources and his assumptions/methodology so it is pretty easy to decide if you agree with his points…..as compared with everyone in Europe knows this so why are you questioning….and still not able to get a reference. For Stewart, I have been reading (but not posting) on the Skyscrapper page since about 2010. The ‘confessions’ I remember were so tongue in cheek I am suprised anyone missed the dripping sarcasm. Congratulations you have surprised me. It should be noted that unlike certain blogs that only show one side most of his posts are about his ideas for changing things or correcting statements by others….probably why Zei is not a fan.
I am sorry to disappoint, but this blog is about Rail for the Valley and PROVEN methods on affordably and efficiently moving people. If you have cared to look, most of the postings are comments on local and international stories, many pertaining to RftV.
The blog is well vetted by real experts, who work daily with transit and transportation issues and if anything is too ‘off the wall’ Zwei will hear about it and corrections will be made.
The real problem is that you, Voony, and the Skyscraper mob don’t like LRT and have invented story after story slagging the mode. The anti-LRT/pro SkyTrain lobby do not like the truth and no matter how you tart up facts to suit your cause, the simple truth remains; “After being on the market for over 33 years only 7 proprietary SkyTrain light-metro systems have been built and operating and in a very short while, there ill be only 5.
The sad fact is, you can champion SkyTrain all you want, but once you leave the environs of Metro Vancouver, SkyTrain’s lustre and the phony density issue, disappears quite quickly. No one buys SkyTrain anymore and certainly Vancouver has not become a model in operating an efficient and affordable transit system. The fact is, the UTDC, Lavalin and now Bombardier have never allowed SkyTrain to compete against modern LRT for a transit contract, a fact that speaks for itself.
If I could understand your posting Rico, with its tangled and untidy structure & poor grammar I might be tempted to respond. I don’t think I will bother this time as there appears to be little point.
I read with amusement, the ramblings of Rico and the Skyscraper Skytrain types and I must come to the conclusion that people in Vancouver live in a fairytale land with Alice in the Sky with Diamonds!
I may not agree with Zwei all the time and find many of his comments rustic in nature, he certain has demonstrated a better knowledge about light rail, trams and railways in general, than most, especially on the Skyscraper pages.
Zweis’ contention that only seven type Skytrain systems have been sold in 33 years should be sounding alarm bells with planners and politicians alike, but fools and their money (especially other peoples money) are soon parted. Doing the same thing over and over again and not looking at ones mistakes and repeating them over and over again, certainly tells volumes about transit planning in Vancouver.
I wonder why Skytrain has never been allowed to compete against light rail? My long experience in the transit field tells me then that SkyTrain is the poorer of the two options.
Part of the reason that LRT is so evpnesixe here is that the grade on the preferred northern alignment is so steep and windy that the designers had no choice, but to build a tunnel to offset this problem.The problem, at least in Vancouver, is that rapid articulating buses are becoming well established and utilized on many corridors. Studies have been done on both the Richmond-Vancouver and the Coquitlam lines comparing rapid bus to fixed rail and LRT have basically suggested that LRT offers limited advantages over BRT. For 4 times the infrastructure price of bus rapid transit, the only real gains from the LRT over BRT from a service delivery perspective are in the form of capacity and reliability; travel time is unchanged. On the Coquitlam corridor, ridership is nowhere near the level where a upgrade in capacity to LRT could be justified.
Zweisystem replies: The studies done comparing LRT with buses and SkyTrain were so biased that they were useless. TransLink alone that SkyTrain will attract more customers than LRT but has never offered a single study to prove this. At grade LRT tends to attract more new customers than grade separated transit system. TransLink compared LRT operating at 7.5 minute headways against SkyTrain 3 minute headways. As I said biased as hell! American transit expert, Gerald Fox, shredded TransLink’s planning some years ago.