"We need sound long-term [transportation] policies based on agreed principles so that future governments, of any stripe, have a blueprint. How can we make arbitrary decisions to spend billions on roads and bridges with no contiguous planning and investment for systems to move people?"
Mayor Richard Walton
AS chairman of the Mayors' Council on Regional Transportation, District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton put that billion-dollar question to me in an email following a TransLink meeting in Richmond Saturday.
It was the third time in six days the agency had presented its 2013-2015 Plan and Outlook.
He went on to explain that Metro Vancouver councillors and MLAs from both parties attended that meeting, while the two earlier events were held to present the plan to the media and to the mayors' council.
The only answer to Walton's question, of course, is that with an estimated three-year revenue shortfall of $472 million, TransLink has little hope of improving its planning or service performance during the life of the plan.
The picture can only get worse if, on Oct. 18, Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie persuades his mayors' council colleagues to continue their rejection of property taxes as a solution to the agency's woes.
In the meantime, the South Coast B.C. Transportation Commission - Martin Crilly, commissioner - has set aside a budget for an independent analysis of the TransLink plan.
Apart from the fact that Crilly was appointed as an independent overseer of TransLink, what is the point of contracting for a consultant's opinion of a plan that may well be materially altered weeks before the $75,000 analysis is ready for the printer - especially when many of us can do the work free of charge?
Earlier this year, after the mayors' council rejected its first property-tax increase, TransLink buckled down to find some financial "efficiencies" throughout its operation.
Turns out, all it had to do was look and - Eureka! - there they were, all $294 million of them. Well, sorta.
We don't save it all at once, you understand; that would be indigestible. The relief is spread over three years.
How will they do it? Eliminate some severance packages? Build light-rail transit at a third of the cost of SkyTrain?
Heck no; silly me. They're going to save money by not providing transportation services. You know, small items like 306,000 hours of planned regional bus services and the ephemeral third SeaBus the North Shore has been promised since before Pat Jacobsen took up the mantra in 2001 when she became CEO.
That promise is always good for a political comment - like the recent good suggestion from City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto who believes it could be paid for by the carbon taxes.
"But hold on," you say. "Didn't we already launch that third boat in January 2010, just before the five-ring circus began?"
Now you see it, now you don't - because, no sooner had the new one left the slipway than one of the aging original vessels was taken out of service for a refit or retirement, take your pick.
SeaBuses aside, if you thought "$98 million in efficiencies" meant you'd just saved a considerable amount of money, you'd be wrong.
When the main focus of a transportation authority is to provide a region-wide transit system, how can you call it "efficiency" to cancel or fail to build essential elements of that system?
Have the touted savings truly been realized when the agency immediately speaks the caveat that it will still need to find another $30 million in revenues if it is to continue operating even at the projected reduced level of service? Or are we down to $68 million with a sweep of the pen?
How will that amount look after factoring in the unmentionables - like the looming need to spend millions on a major refurbishment of the 30-yearold Expo Line and its aging concrete guideways?
Never one to blush at its own lack of long-term thinking, TransLink had the temerity to mention yet again that its revenues from gasoline taxes - which do not include the carbon tax portion - had declined "faster than anticipated."
Speaking of gas-taxes: Before the Millennium Line was even opened, I kept asking, "If projections about the number of cars SkyTrain will take off the road are close to being accurate, how will TransLink manage without the lost gas-tax revenues?"
Why listen to common sense, when you can spend millions to "attract the best minds and expertise"?
While we're on the subject of ridership, the new report repeats TransLink's ongoing claims of an increase in ridership numbers relative to the increase in regional population.
Good news, maybe; but the gauntlet taxpayers should throw down to TransLink board chairwoman Nancy Olewiler is this: How do you conduct an accurate ridership count to prove that claim?
To which the only truthful answer is, "We can't; not in a system that may clock the same rider two or three different ways in one trip, we can't."
Nor does the TransLink promise to "live within its means" mean exactly what it says.
If it did, then the agency would not need to draw down its reserve accounts in order to balance the books - give or take the $30 million shortfall that is.
When it comes to SkyTrain decisions, it would be unfair to adjourn this discussion without acknowledging the perverse and dominant role Victoria has played in TransLink misfortunes.
In 1999, Glen Clark was all smiles as he included responsibility for the SkyTrain expansion project as part of the transportation authority. He knew he was down-loading to the region a project that had become his multi-billion-dollar headache - without an appropriate funding formula to pay for it.
That said there has been nothing, other than salaries and honoraria, to stop any of the CEOs, quasi-elected boards, councils and/or commissions from flat-out refusing to participate any further in the continuing disaster that is our transportation authority.
That they have not speaks volumes about their willingness - or ability - to protect the public interest.
Lastly, if Crilly repeats his opinion that pouring a property tax hike into TransLink's bottomless pit is "reasonable," maybe this time the provincial government will hear our message: Regional citizens in the third largest city in Canada are entitled to and are taxed for an efficient, affordable transportation system.
Taxpayers understand that all British Columbians benefit from that, albeit some only indirectly via tourist revenues and reduced costs for transportation of goods.
So let's stop wasting money on propertytax ideas, carbon taxes and cumbersome, inequitable bridge tolling.
Instead, Crilly should ask professional actuaries to calculate the true costs of the entire transportation network that would include infrastructure projects that are necessary province wide.
Once we have that information, the provincial government should then recover all transportation costs via a sliding scale of increased income tax, using that new revenue for nothing but transportation.
Only then can we engage Walton's "contiguous planning" and invest in affordable "systems to move people" throughout British Columbia.
