There are some awesome points in this thread.

A few more that came to my mind.

Skytrain is fucking expensive technology. Think about it...you are building a 70km long bridge through the city.

On translink:

The main problem I have with crown corps like this is the lack of a bottom line. Let's say a business wants to get into the business of mass transit. They need to find a way to finance a project, and make it profitable to the shareholders. Here...shit boys..we overspent on everything else...please sir, can we have some more? Hell, we'll even give you suggestions on how to raise taxes on our behalf.

On speed:

Too fast! Milenium line in 2000, Canada line in 2010, now evergreen in 2015ish?

Need to let ridership buiild, and pay off some shit before you build more.

On unions:

I'll always add a bit how unions are sucking the life out of public ventures. The wages are so far out of comparison to private sector, you can't even compare anymore.

Fuck 'em.

No, the reason we drive is because Translink system is badly planned. I live steps away from Skytrain and I take EVERY opportunity to ride the Canada line.

However, many don't have luxuries living close by. My friend who lives 5min driving away from me (Aberdeen vs. No4/Granville) but if he has to take the bus to get to skytrain, that's an extra hour commuting everyday (between walk to bus stop, wait for bus and transfer)

If he drives to skytrain, he has to add an extra $40 for parking near the station. And that would only cut 20min on daily commute (he works near the Burrad bridge, so he needs to take another bus after skytrain)

Now, if skytrain is better designed system-wise (more stations in downtown core + free park-ride parking) people would give up driving. At 1.35/L, driving isn't exactly cheap, but people have no choice.

People in Vancouver don't drive to get from point A to point B, they drive because they enjoy it. This is a car forum for car enthusiast. People in Vancouver drive to UBC or SFU instead of using their Upass. People in Vancouver drive nice cars because they like it. You're only fooling yourself if you say people would give up driving if skytrain had 100 more stations. And like I said, no one is gonna go on a date and take the skytrain if they had access to a car in Vancouver.

Posted via RS Mobile

I think users paying for whatever they use is perfectly logical. Because I'm not a socialist, I'm misinformed?

Of course you are. You don't have to commute daily in either of those vehicles. The number of vehicles you own has little to do with the amount of fuel you are consuming annually.

Public transit is a privilege, not a right. And you should pay for that privilege.

What kind of goods is public transit moving? I don't see any freight being transported on skytrain.

How? Please quantify your claim.

Hypothetical. Without Expo Line or Canada line we could have hypothetically had our road systems upgraded and more buses/HOV lanes/frequent routes on the road.

Weren't you just preaching to us about perspective? It appears yours is as skewed as ours.

I don't get it. In your last post you say it's a sound investment, now you are questioning how this makes financial sense? You are contradicting yourself here.

Better roadways? More frequent bus service? More bus-stops? Why do we automatically have to resort to a multi-hundred-million dollar train that we can't afford?

Can you quantify your claim? IMO, transit would still exist. It would be more expensive. Just as owning a vehicle has become more expensive. It's up to the user to determine whether they want to save a few bucks and go transit or not.

This isn't just a starving student situation. This is a starving family situation. In the burbs, you can't take your kids to soccer practice on the skytrain. Or as a contractor, take your ladder and tools on a bus. Some people genuinely need their vehicles and the increased taxes are eating into their budgets annually. Yet somehow they are being forced to subsidize a service they rarely, if ever use.

It's not about the dollar value, it's about the principle. The Translink system has been drowning for many years now with expenditures that far outpace their revenues. Yet the executive team see fit to grant raises to themselves for underperforming? They have a lot of nerve mismanaging the transit system but then celebrating with significant annual bonuses and salary increases.

$40 million is a lot less then the hundreds of millions that the Evergreen line will cost. Here's a thought, maximize your revenue before pursuing taxation and large capital expenditures.

This is the mentality that the government wants the average citizen to buy into.

1 cent here. 2 cents there. Not a big deal right?

Just keep in mind that lower mainlanders are already paying 15c/L in local excise taxes, by far the highest in the country (most cities have ZERO). So what's 15c/L? Based on a an average vehicle doing 24,000kms a year and 10L/100km average consumption, we are talking 2400L of fuel consumed a year. 15c/L = $360/year in additional taxes. So yeah, what's 2c more a litre? Just another $50 bucks to put the average citizen at over $400 of additional tax per year over someone from the fraser valley. Not such a little deal anymore, is it?

I don't mean to come off harsh. It's good to have an alternate viewpoint so we can learn from one another and make informed votes and decisions regarding these issues. Just saw your strings of posts and I have to take some contention with them.

Kev

The sad truth is, it would have taken 10 years to pay for the turnstiles themselves. PWC estimates lost revenue to be between $5-10M per year.

http://www.translink.ca/~/media/docu...pwcsept07.ashx

There's no magic bullet, so stop dreaming. This is why Translink pays for management instead of installing chumps who pull numbers from thin air. Even though you're not happy with them, we would be worse off with chumps.

I don't think it would be the end all be all for money coming in but that 5-10m figure of uncollected fairs is a pipe dream. It's way higher then that they just don't want to admit it like everybody who has to answer to the public before them.

i know for some people if the time it took to skytrain was as fast as driving, they would take it but theres others like me who would still drive either way.. oh well. make a system thats even faster than a car and i would take it no sweat

One word for Translink: Octopus. I don't care what the system costs to incorporate, the end result would be worth it and streamline their entire pathetic operation.

More time would help people adjust to the idea of transit. Do we really have that much more time before gas is at 2$/L?
My neighbors are still trying to get people to attend cityhall meetings, against high density near canadaline stations. WTF?
The only way to get more transit usership is to build higher density and have netherlands style bike parking at the stations.
They should be glad some contractors are going to want to pay more for their lots to build on, take that money and f off to kelowna or something.

they should just increase the fees in the gas stations in areas where the skytrain would serve, such as PoCo. That way, the citizens would go broke from paying for gas and would be forced to use the skytrain line when it's completed :-D

the $5-10 includes lost revenue on all forms of transit - including the bus. Having turnstiles doesn't automatically mean you're going to regain all that lost revenue. I lived in London for 2 years - and they have a state of the art system - yet you still see tons of people jumping the turnstiles, or fitting in more than one person through at a time. Douchebags are going to try to rip the system regardless.

Anyways, translink is moving towards a NFC system - but it takes years to plan and put into place. You can't just say, we'll install turnstiles and all our problems will be solved - because you'll have to streamline the system with our buses as well - which is the big issue there. I think the projected year is 2013 for the system to come into place.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Of course it's easy to look back and bitch and say why didn't we have this system put in place years ago.

Personally - I think that we should do what a lot of countries in Europe do. If you get caught evading fare - the fine must be paid on the spot - the officer is willing to walk to the ATM with you. If you don't pay, you get thrown in jail. Honestly, our fine system here sucks balls - most of the tickets don't get paid, and it's not economically feasible to go after each person. ICBC has it easy - because they can just stop you from renewing your licence.

We do pay for the privilege through fares. Public transit is far more efficient at moving people than 20 lane highways and single occupancy vehicles. Driving a car is far more of a privilege than taking public transit. My point is that you should pay more for that privilege.

When you take people off the roads, there's more room on our limited freeway infrastructure for trucks, freight and for people like you who need their cars for business purposes. And this has a positive impact on our economy because goods and people like you don't have to spend time in traffic with other commuters who don't need to be in cars.

Skytrain is expensive no doubt, but your solution is to build more highways? With anything, if you build it, they will come. If you build more highways, more people will drive and you'll have the same issues with traffic 20 years into the future. Think LA and every other city in North America that has built more highways to alleviate congestion.

Buses take up valuable space on existing roads. Unless you build a dedicated system of bus highways (like Ottawa), you eventually get a situation that exists on Broadway with bumper-to-bumper buses. Skytrain is expensive, but in my opinion, it's a more worthwhile investment because it has a dedicated track, no drivers (less wages to pay), it's extremely reliable (trips are on-time over 95% of the time), you can add capacity fairly quickly, and people like riding trains more than buses which generates more ridership and revenue.

It can be tough for families to take transit, I know. My perspective is skewed because I don't live in the Valley. I see families on buses and on Skytrains on this side of the Fraser. I started riding buses with my mom and sister at a very young age, so it is possible for families to make adjustments. It's a different reality in the Valley I guess because you have larger lots and longer blocks.

No worries here.

I haven't been reading this whole thread, (nor any of the other 824824 brought up in the past 10 years of RS existance) but me and my buddy have talked about this subject for many, many, many years. I always was in the camp that said it should be self-sufficient; if it was run well enough, it should not need any public money at all. If i don't use it, i shouldn't need to pay for it. My friend, on the other hand, made me think completely differently when he proposed that public transit should be 100% funded through taxation, and NO money should be charged on a per-use base.

At first i laughed at him and called him a commie, but after thinking about it, it makes ALOT of sense. busses/trains should be integrated as infrastructure, such as roads.

yes, the overall cost will be higher, however the benefits will be great imo. i have no stats to back me up, but i think it's safe to say that ridership would go up, so congestion should go down. Safety would be a by-product of this as well i believe -- more people would be inclined to take public transit instead of drive when they go out to party. the easier you make things for people to use, the less excuses they have to NOT use them.

^What qualifications, education, and credibility do you have to say that if it was run well enough, it wouldn't need ANY public money. Transit is considered an essential public/social service for people who have no other way of getting around, so it would need to be provided even at a loss. Do you know how many transit systems in the world actually run profitably? And of the few that are (I think Tokyo and Osaka, that's my assumption), most likely it is due to population density, something we DON'T have. As well, others in this thread have mentioned other transit companies (MTR) are allowed to develop properties and etc to generate cash flow for their operations, something translink might not be allowed to do.

In the end, your idea all comes down to feasibility. If we take it out of taxes, where would the funds come from? Does each person in the province, territory, region pay one fixed amount? Is the amount different for teenagers, adults, or seniors? Or per household? What about people that don't have homes (homeless)? Low income households? What about regions where transit is too inefficient to take or does not reach? Once again, this essentially becomes a tax that only certain people are going to end up paying, if the amount is "equitably distributed", most of whom would still continue driving their cars and thus were back to square 1, people frustrated they may be forced to pay a tax for a service they won't use.

With more ridership, we need more buses, drivers, and support staff. Guess we have to raise taxes, all for the benefit of less congestion. How do you calculate ridership levels at certain times so it does not turn into a logistics nightmare? How much does less congestion help our economy? Do the benefits outweigh the costs? I think we need stats.

false. I would totally again to work if there's a station near my work. I took transit for a month and it would take me 1 hour from my door to work including walk, train, bus. Now I just drive because it only takes me 25 mins AND it's cheaper than taking transit.
Posted via RS Mobile

I actually went to some seminars on community planning and was also lucky enough to go to conferences on metro transportation systems. When I was younger, I thought that transit was stupid and that it should be user pay. As I get older, I found that there's a lot of shiet that the average person doesn't know and just assume.

There are tonnes of factors that go into public transit planning, but one things for sure, you have to look at the future.

It is not REASONABLE to assume that the majority of households are going to have 2 cars and be able to drive from A to B all the time. Congestion is going to increase dramatically and your average commute will increase.

I asked most of the people that I know that have to cross bridges or commute on Hwy 1 etc. most of them said they would gladly pay more to be able to use the HOV lane or have some sort of mechanism that reduces there commute time in half. Ask yourself? How much more are you willing to pay to cut your commute time in half to work. $1 a day? $ 2 a day? If the answer is yes, then that's $200 - $500 more a year. The 2 cents in tax that we pay per liter assuming 50 litres a week accounts to $52 bucks a year. A small price to pay for reduced congestion.

The Metro Vancouver population is rapidly growing, people have to get to places. Over the next 15-25 years, another 500K to 1 million people will be moving into this area.

This is a car forum, consisting of young car owners. More public transit will benefit drivers in the long run as it removes cars from the road and decrease congestion.

+ 1 for quality post.

Sadly I agree with this...I have a station close to where I live but my work does not...takes me one hour one way versus thirty minutes taking my car...plus the fact that transit prices continue to go up as well makes my decision easier...
Also try going to the grocery with your kids using the bus and see how hard it is...

I am sure if you really want users to pay what they use, the price of driving would increase 1000x and not many people would be happy with that.

the 2c gas tax hits 2 birds at once.

1. 2c itself as pure cash
2. more ridership from the people that are already on edge from such a high price to drive.

translink is hella evil. meter parking increase also makes more money AND discourages driving and more ridership again...... and they STILL need more money......

What do you base that off of, though? I wondering if you clicked the link. It's an audit by PwC, a big 4 accounting firm with a reputation to uphold...

Still, when you see them do fare checks on a skytrain car, they will usually catch 2 ppl out of ~40. The percentage is in the ball park in my observations. Has anyone witnessed anything substantially higher than that on average? 20% evasion with 8 ppl pulled out? 50% with 20 ppl pulled out? If not, I don't see any valid reason to doubt that report in any significant manner.

Oh yeah.. it's actually just $3-5M for just SkyTrain. Annual SkyTrain revenue is $40M.

And each line cost in the billions? That's public transit.. expensive and will lose money under most circumstances.

After reading the report. .it boggles my mind how low the % is. LESS than 1% of evaders get tickets.

The likelihood of being caught by transit police is less than 1% for fair evaders. . . . fuck. . . I always thought it was higher.

To make it worst. Less than 10% of transit tickets issued are being paid.


They recommend to tie the penalty to other benefits/government organizations. . . . ie. ICBC/Property Tax, or something or other non-monetary inconveniences. ie. Immediate removal from property and/or A temporary ban which delays them from getting to where they want to go.

If you're a student/kid or poor and don't drive you don't give a shiet about not paying for transit.

Translink collects a portion of the property tax and now mayors are proposing to give them the ability to collect a portion of gas taxes. It's not perfect, but at least everyone will pay a share. Some people own property, but no cars and vice versa. Others get hit twice.

Transit expansion has an indirect positive impact on your commute. You may not be able to use it, but others will which will keep them off the roads to make it easier for you to get where you want to go.

That's why a driverless system like Skytrain is better over the long haul. Sure, you need a few more support staff on the ground, but it's all computer controlled and it costs less to maintain over the long term than a fleet of buses.

Translink is implementing Compass which is a smart card like Octopus, Oyster, etc. Once it's implemented, it will be able to track transit patterns in real-time so it can make better decisions with respect to planning, bus routes, etc.

Transit should also know that their hours of opertation sucks.

On weekends or Holidays the last train stops at like. 12:30am. Come on now people stays out till at least 2am clubbing lol. The night bus sucks as it comes maybe every 30mins and it covers such a small area.

Their so call zone system sucks. Pretty right now Vancouver is divded into 3 zones where u pay more if you want to use the system in all 3 zones. So say I live in between the border of the zone. Metrotown to Joyce(that's a total of 3 skystrain station) I have to pay a 2 zone ticket while if I say get on the skytrain at Production and go to Metrotown (that's like maybe 10 stations) I only have to pay 1zone.

The system is dumb and stupid. The amount each riders pay should be determine on how many stations you ride (like in HK).

BTW: I took the skytrain this morning and at boardway station they were checking for tickets lol. At least 4 ppl were caught =D