Vested Interests

th

Vested interests: Reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation, especially an expectation of financial or other gain.

Vested interests is the real reason for transit planning in metro Vancouver.

It is also the reason why the SkyTrain Lobby is so powerful because they are the useful idiots of vested interests.

Harsh words indeed.

Despite the local hype and hoopla, Metro Vancouver’s continued transit expansion centered on light metro certainly does not benefit transit riders. as mode share for people using transit is slowly eroding with higher ridership numbers attributed to steady population growth in metro Vancouver.

The following graph illustrates the steady erosion of transit customers and this is pre Covid.

 

Metro Vancouver Mode Share 2017

Metro Vancouver Mode Share 2017

In Vancouver the vested interest wanting light metro construction is the bike and auto lobbies; engineering companies; cement manufacturers; land developers/speculators: and politicians, each with expectations in financial, politcal or other gains.

What is missing, especially in the age of climate change and global warming, is an affordable alternative to the car.

Those who regularly support extending SkyTrain light metro, remain blind and deaf to the the many issues pertaining to light metro construction and light metro operation. Most do not have the faintest idea about transit and transit mode and bleat in unison, like Orwell’s sheep, “SkyTrain good, LRT bad”. The SkyTrain Lobby love to cherry pick information to suit their cause but the one question they continually ignore is:

Why, after being on the market for 45 years, only seven  Movia Automatic Light Metro systems (a proprietary light metro that now has had four owners) have been built?

In an era of unprecedented investment in public transit, the proprietary MALM system has failed to find a market and is avoided as a dated light metro system with no advantages in operation when compared to much cheaper light rail.

Again, who has copied Vancouver’s P-3 Canada Line?

The Caisse du Depot (one of the concessionaires of the P-3 Canada Line) of Quebec saw how easy it was to make sizable profits from dishonest politicians and uninformed taxpayers by building Montreal’s P-3 REM light metro.

It seems the vested interests want more SkyTrain light metro, eagerly to drain the taxpayer of even more scarce amounts of income in the form of increased taxes and subsidies.

This is the very sad legacy of Metro Vancouver’s regional transportation planning, the vested interests continue to make huge profits from the rubes who have failed to ask questions and demand oversight of transit planning and operation.

As Barnum observed; “There is a sucker born every minute” and the vested interests just love suckers.

Comments

One Response to “Vested Interests”
  1. Nathan Davidowicz says:

    The 2023 mode share is less than the 2017.
    I estemated that in the Lower Mainland of BC the mode share for Transit and Active Transportation is only around 20%
    We will miss the 2030 target that Clean BC proposed.
    Clean BC targets are 30% by 2030 and 40% by 2040.

Leave A Comment