Posts from — April 2010

Legislation creating a new funding approval process for Translink, announced yesterday by Transportation Minister Shirley Bond, is not new at all.

In fact, it sounds exactly like the old “three-year plan, 10-year outlook” system that was in place until former Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon threw a bomb into Translink about three years ago. Under Falcon’s rules, Translink had to do a massive annual consultation and planning process on a 10-year plan, make multiple submissions to a commission and regional mayors, and prepare for massive cuts if any part went on the rocks.

Had the “new” process been in place, it would have been much easier for Translink to prepare a long-term plan that produced funding for the Evergreen in the near term at levels close to the $225 million increase acceptable to the province. Then the province and the municipalities could have worked over a longer time frame to resolve the much larger issues of system expansion and the UBC/Broadway line.

At it was, the Translink Council of Mayors approved a minimal $130 million increase and nothing  was resolved.

Is this the “fix” of Translink promised in the last Throne Speech? Perhaps, but Victoria still must tell the Mayors how it expects them to fund the Evergreen Line.

Can Victoria impose a solution? Given the raging battles over HST and school funding, that seems like a risky proposition.

Reports about last night’s Annual General Meeting of the Non-Partisan Association indicate the organization remains divided about whether or not it’s a political party but united on the view it should not have policy or consult with voters before the election.  The meeting rejected the idea of policy development but approved a process to consider a name change, ideally using the same initials.

(If a name change is approved, perhaps it should be the No Policy Association.)

Despite the criticism, there could be merit in a no-policy approach. No policy would mean no election promises and therefore no possibility of betraying campaign pledges.

At the Vision Vancouver AGM, which attracted three times as many people (250), there was a report from the Mayor on how the Vision council is progressing on implementing is policy. Is Vision a party? It didn’t come up, but there was definitely a party afterwards.

Council’s midnight decision last Thursday to inject a further $32 million into social housing at the Olympic Village was one of the most difficult Gregor Robertson’s Vision team has confronted. I summarized the reasons why we did what we did here in this morning’s Province.

This should be last major financial decision arising from the NPA’s colossal mismanagement of the Olympic Village file. Almost a year ago, council approved a proposal to step into the village’s financing, moving out a New York hedge fund and saving taxpayers as much as $90 million. In about 60 days, the market units will go on sale. If all goes well, the city’s financial investment will be repaid.

The latest proposal to open up New York street space for pedestrians and buses puts Vancouver’s modest efforts to shame.

With the blessing of Mayor Bloomberg, transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan proposes to slice 34th Street in half with a huge pedestrian plaza. All traffic on one side would flow west, on the other, it would flow east, and new bus lanes, which would cross the plaza, should improve bus travel times by 35 percent.

Will Vancouver move, in the wake of the Olympics experience, to do something similar? At the moment, there are no specific proposals under development.

As Sadik-Khan notes, most people travel the street on foot, by bus or by taxi. They will all see improvements. Of course, there are detractors.