Category — Transit

There may be more transit investment news in what is missing from today’s provincial budget than from what is stated.

As expected, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure budget plan spells out Victoria’s commitment to build the Evergreen Line to connect Coquitlam and Burnaby via Port Moody with new Skytrain service.

The estimated cost of the project is $1.4 billion, with construction slated to begin in 2011 and end four years later. Victoria is kicking in $410 million and Ottawa has pledged $417 million, leaving a hefty $600 million bill for Translink to pick  up starting next year.

The ministry plan helpfully sets out the combined federal and Translink capital contribution requirement on page 30: $568 million by 2013. The problem is, Translink will need a new funding source — or impose major fare, property and gas increases — to meet the goal. (This reality may provide a clue to the meaning of the Throne Speech pledge to “fix Translink.”)

The Evergreen Line is expected to carry only 70,000 riders a day by 2021, six years after opening. The $2 billion Canada Line, by contrast, was expected to achieve twice that number by 2013, three years after opening. It hit that number within 90 days and has surged up to nearly 300,000 a day during the Olympics.

How will Victoria force Metro Vancouver municipalities to fill the funding gap? Time will tell, but today’s budget sets the terms for the debate to come. [Read more →]

The 2010 Games were an acid test for Translink and the region’s transportation engineers: get athletes to every event on time, move 30 percent of drivers off the road, run the system flat out for the better part of a month, set new records for capacity and efficiency.

If they failed when the eyes of the world were on them, they could count on Victoria to make their lives nasty, brutish and short.

As Frances Bula points out in today’s Globe, they have exceeded all expectations, shattering previous ridership records and moving unprecedented volumes of people.

Translink is the public corporation that Victoria loves to hate. A comptroller general’s report was cooked up to seek evidence of waste in Translink, with limited results.

Regional consensus on a massive investment in public transit was torpedoed last fall by Transportation Minister Shirley Bond.

Finally, February’s Throne Speech made this ominous pledge:

The success of the new Canada Line has reinforced government’s commitment to invest record amounts in public transit, fix TransLink and get on with the Evergreen Line.

Fix Translink? Which part is broken?

Bring on the record investment, but please save the fixes for a real problem.

The staggering numbers of travellers moved by public transit during the first weekend of the Games — 150,000 a day on the Canada Line, more than 20,000 daily on the Olympic Line streetcars — are shattering preconceptions about regional transportation.

Olympic Line numbers are already competitive with existing urban streetcar systems like Portland’s and the Canada Line is now delivering daily volumes that planners did not expect to see for many years.

Ridership numbers like these transform the business case for transit investments and build public support at the same time.

The most recent reorganization of Translink, triggered in 2007 by former Highways Minister Kevin Falcon, arguably cost the system $150 million.

That’s how much of its accumulated surplus Translink burned through waiting for the new governance model to gather steam and produce new sources of revenue, which it finally did last September.

That’s when the Translink Mayor’s Council finally approved a package of revenue measures worth $130 million annually to cover costs without increasing service. Today, the Mayor’s Council heard Translink Commissioner outline his reasons why he has signed off on the fare increase portion of the new plan, as he must by law.

However, Crilly declined to approve Translink’s applications for fare increases for 10 years, limiting the current decision to three years.

Of 270 submissions on the fare increase, almost none were in favour.

The main news at today’s meeting: Translink will not be proceeding with another supplement application to increase revenue and service until next year at the earliest, ensuring at least another year of drift at the corporation while Victoria considers yet another legislative intervention.