Metor Vancouver face a tough decision tomorrow - one that seems inevitable in its result, however.
In spite of the fact that the Mayor’s Council at Metro Vancouver is poised to okay an extra $130 million for Translink tomorrow, I find it disturbing how municipalities are being held hostage with threats of 40 per cent drops in transit that would resemble levels of service from the 1970s.
Whether it is a Translink model that cannot pay for all of its expenses, or a provincial government that trumpets a $14 billion 10-year transportation plan without providing adequate resources, municipalities are being unfairly asked to pick up the slack.
The Transportation Minister Shirley Bond has to give additional revenue raising capacities to cities (which are extremely limited as I have continually detailed on CivicScene since the website’s launch), or acquiesce to Translink’s demands for a share of carbon-tax revenues or the ability to implement road-pricing mechanisms. Or of course, the province could just pay for what they committed in January, 2008. With the province’s largest deficit in history, however, that seems unlikely.
The City of Edmonton study determined that a Metro Vancouver tax bill is comprised of 7.4 per cent from transit while just 4.5 per cent of the average Torontonian’s property taxes account for their city’s public transportation.
Downloading the costs of operating costs to municipalities is one thing, but dumping the burden of major capital costs is unreasonable. These kinds of investments, particularly from a plan that was glowingly described by the Premier just under two years ago, are the responsibility of the province and perhaps the federal government to fund, not cash-starved cities.
CivicScene has a call into West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones who will hopefully offer some comments and answer some questions about how municipalities are going to handle this additional burden on their coffers.
When one operates very expensive light-metro on routes that do not have the ridership to support it, expect high subsidies. When there is now three light-metro lines, operating on routes that do not have the ridership to sustain them, watch out for massive subsidies.
To date, the SkyTrain light-metro system is subsidized by over $230 million annually; with RAV/Canada line, expect the the annual subsidy to rise past $300 million. Sadly there is only one taxpayer and it seems the SkyTrain/light-metro subsidies have sucked monies out of TransLink that could be otherwise spent on other transit projects.
By caving into TransLink we will just continue the the vicious circle of bad transit planning > higher costs > higher subsidies > higher taxes > more bad planning > higher costs > higher subsidies > higher taxes > more bad planning ……….
To think, the taxpayer has now spent over $8 billion on SkyTrain/RAV, yet light-metro ridership has only kept pace with population increase, TransLink has yet to show a modal shift from car to transit.
Caving in to TransLink is like giving an alcoholic another drink.
Jonathan, I think this link will be very educational for you.
http://mikeclay.blogspot.com/2009/10/translink-10-year-financial-plan.html