SeaBus vs. bus. Which do you prefer to take on a trip downtown?
A SeaBus ride is generally faster and more scenic. The SeaBus is also designed to carry far more people efficiently and hooks in easily to rapid transit options.
But thanks to the endlessly convoluted logic that governs decisions at TransLink, it just got significantly cheaper to take the bus.
Which will have the exact opposite effect to what TransLink should be aiming for.
As legions of policy-makers have already discovered, money is one of the best drivers of human behaviour.
People avoid expensive options. They sign up for the cheaper ones.
That’s especially true of daily activities like commuting, where small amounts can quickly add up to a lot of cash.
But by driving more people on to already overcrowded buses, TransLink is creating more problems than it’s solving.
Witness the Port Mann toll bridge, where commuters were quick to ditch the convenience of the new for more convoluted but free options. One result was more congestion on the older traffic routes less equipped to deal with it.
A version of that is not what we want on the North Shore bottlenecks.
So far, official response has been to urge North Shore commuters to think of the “greater good” in making their choices.
TransLink need look no further than its own failed funding referendum to see how that’s likely to fly.
For the sake of bus riders, logic and other North Shore commuters, we hope this decision will be reconsidered.
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