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> Global News has learned the organization is getting $479 million of budget surplus money
> Ridership is about 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels but revenue collection accounts for about 75 per cent.
> The mayors’ council made a formal request last month to the federal government to provide $250 million in additional emergency funds to be matched by the B.C. government. However, the province has concluded it does not expect that money to come from Ottawa so they are providing $479 million to the organization.
>> Global News has learned the organization is getting $479 million of budget surplus money
>
>> Ridership is about 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels but revenue collection accounts for about 75 per cent.
>
>> The mayors’ council made a formal request last month to the federal government to provide $250 million in additional emergency funds to be matched by the B.C. government. However, the province has concluded it does not expect that money to come from Ottawa so they are providing $479 million to the organization.
Good on the province for stepping up and providing nearly all of the funding required. Shame that Ottawa doesn't think this is a priority.
In fairness Ottawa provided a lot of transit relief during the pandemic.
This is on top of the $14.9B promises made in 2021.
I'm guessing Ottawa feels pretty tapped out by now.
TTC cut service because it couldn't get funding I thought. Writing was in the wall for us if precious Toronto couldn't get money.
Ottawa would rather spend money on exciting capital projects they can attach their name to, not boring operational costs especially outside of Toronto and Quebec.
Why would Ottawa get involved in this? BC was unwilling to provide the funding until they had a budget surplus. Ottawas fiscal position is far worse, and far worse for so many Canadians. Forking over a quarter billion so BC can subsidize bus driver salaries doesn't make any sense.
except that this money is inevitably going to disappear into a black hole just like the money BC Ferries got. how much do you want to bet that both of these dysfunctional mismanaged entities will be right back at square one in short order after some other unforeseen situation arises?
instead of all these handouts to friends and family, the gov't could have just divvied up the loot and sent everyone in the province a cheque to pay their own bills or spend as they wish. i mean after all, this was all our money to begin with
You should see how dysfunctional their maintenance department is. A friend was working on skytrain for years. They accomplish maybe 45 minutes worth of work in a day. They take naps on company time, watch movies and just generally waste the day. The parts department is often to blame as they have no idea what they are doing.
Everyone is so overly specialized that they have a different *department* for doors and door actuators.
It’s insane.
Translink needs some serious external audits of exactly what goes on. Yes you want some surplus manpower available in case something goes wrong not that much.
Sure the transit system works. But as a contractor who actually repairs things with a budget in mind the waste in their maintenance department is obscene.
Down vote all you like.
Thats pretty typical of all maintenance departments though. Your either bored out of your mind, or you have 30 minutes to fix everything. You need to be staffed for the peak because you never know when it will occur.
I've worked with private sector maintenance that works the same say. Plus you can try to be proactive but Ops usually has all the clout and they tell maintenance to screw off with their preventative shit.
Think of Star Trek. Sometimes its a Geordi episode and he needs to invert the warpcore and deflect the repulsor array all inside an hour. But most episodes engineering is probably just hanging out down there, doing nothing because everything works that day, which means you have 50 engineers down there sleeping in the Jeffries tubes, or playing poker or whatever.
Lower Decks had an episode about exactly this. The captain found out about 'buffer time', tried to eliminate it, and ended up stressing everyone out to the point that they were so singularly focused on doing the make-work tasks that they could not possibly see or address the issues that weren't explicitly accounted for.
I own an industrial maintenance contracting company and I am going to disagree with you. The levels of overstaffing there are out of this world. Getting to the point where you have separate departments for doors AND door actuators? Give me a break. The levels of specialization have become insane.
Remember, this isn’t like a factory floor where that ONE machine absolutely has to run this afternoon. They have spare busses and skytrain cars they can swap out. There is always a few in the shop getting an overhaul and if they had an effectively managed parts supply system they could keep guys busy. But because of over-specialization if that one guy doesn’t have THE one part he just sits around. And that is the *culture* there. The entire organization is built around insane inefficiency. The parts department is even slower and causes massive bottlenecks. This was like this BEFORE the pandemic. I can just imagine how much worse it is with the parts shortages now.
My friend there (who I used to employ for years and know quite well) spent 3 years there and eventually quit from boredom.
What you just described is basically every vehicle repair shop ever. If anything, it is reassuring to know that they are overstaffed rather than understaffed.
Nope. I have spent 3 decades in trades, 8 in vehicle repair shops and 15 years running my indistrial maintenance contracting company. Trades people keep busy. You have to. The overhead on a shop is crazy. If you don’t have mad throughput you go bankrupt.
Overstaffing slightly is important with a transit system. Shit happens. Overstaffing by 500% is just government bloat.
>Overstaffing by 500%
If that's even remotely true, you should contact CBC Go Public, Justin McElroy, etc. Any half decent journalist would jump at the chance to investigate such corruption. As a taxpayer I look forward to seeing this egregious waste of our money being brought to light.
> You should see how dysfunctional their maintenance department is. A friend was working on skytrain for years. They accomplish maybe 45 minutes worth of work in a day. They take naps on company time, watch movies and just generally waste the day. The parts department is often to blame as they have no idea what they are doing.
You'd have more of a case to make if you could actually prove any of this.
What do you want me to do, walk around filming them? Talk to people who work there.
I knew both a maintenance guy and a guy in the paint department. It is the slackest job you can imagine. Both have now left. The mechanic went to engineering school and the painter retired. I have zero connections down there now.
there is some leaks online on [cptdb](https://cptdb.ca/topic/13213-transit-service-discussion-articulatedconventionalshuttleskytrainseabus/?do=findComment&comment=961549), and supposedly you can use the trip planning feature to look ahead to see the changes, but it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t
Lol true! But what I really want is distance-based smart fares (instead of zoning), better inter-suburb skytrain connections (eg: a Richmond-Surrey-Coquitlam route), and smartphone app integration for the Compass Card!
Considering some cities has their fare system in the 90s and already have distance based billing while we are stuck with zones w/ a system that was bought in the New Millennium and only implemented mid 2010s’ is just pathetic.
I ride the R3 whenever I can, because I know it’s a future potential route. Maple Ridge getting the SkyTrain is inevitable. Whether it’s from Langley down 200th or Coquitlam down Lougheed. I
Except asking for double the budget would have added four or five years to the fundraising stage.
For something that hadn't been surveyed or designed or engineered
There are like 4 other higher priority places to put a new Skytrain line rather than an extension to UBC that drops half its ridership 5 months of the year…
I'm honestly really liking TransLink's 10 year plan with all the new RapidBus, Express and BRT routes. We need a much stronger core network and we needed it 20 years ago, and this plan will actually help catch things up a bit.
Good! Sustainability comes from walking, biking, and public transport, not investment in highways and suburban sprawl. Suburbs and exurbs actually cost us money in the long run, and we should focus on urban infill and densification instead.
Amen.
I really wish our transportation network was more robust. Getting to work and back is OK but most other trips feel like a chore. I'm either cycling on shared roads and dodging cars or I'm waiting 15 mins for a bus that still has to sit in traffic.
Vancouver is great compared to the rest of NA but until we stop treating transit/cyclists as an afterthought our cities will continue to be car dependant nightmares.
I was in Ontario recently and literally all I could think about was how I missed Vancouvers transit. The highway interchanges there are as large as those in the US and despite having a larger transit system than Vancouvers, Toronto's system just wasnt as nice as ours
> Getting to work and back is OK but most other trips feel like a chore.
This is basically it in a nutshell for me. Work and back on the bus is tolerable since it's one and done. Anything else almost always involves a bus change or a mode change (e.g. Bus -> Skytrain, etc).
The province continues to refuse to give BCT a dime for service hour expansion despite the FVX recording 200% of 2019 ridership.
No swing ridings outside of immediate Metro Vancouver unfortunately.
"Unprecedented investment in transit in the Fraser Valley" by the way. Yeah no there's basically nothing other than one exchange lol.
this isn’t what the funding is about, it’s about keeping fares stable for transit users, supporting public transit infrastructure avoiding service cuts and enable transit expansion plans needed to respond to growing communities
[source](https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/1636100223725613056?s=46&t=_3Kge3N0BJFAicfd6CGD4w)
From the press conference it was to maintain the [translink 10-year plan](https://www.translink.ca/plans-and-projects/strategies-plans-and-guidelines/transit-and-transportation-planning/ten-year-investment-plan) without cutting services or increasing fares.
If they were smart, they’d be doing more merch around limited edition passes that cost extra and novelty passes like keychains. There’s clearly a demand for these.
https://www.translink.ca/about-us/about-translink/bylaws
Translink passed it as a bylaw. So they are the ones to be able to change it. Doubt that will happen, because they have a strong union who will oppose changes like these from coming to fruition.
Australia has it on their opal system.
The Vancouver system is basically a watered down version of what we have in Sydney.
Don't know why we need to reinvent things and waste money, instead of just replicating the system to Vancouver
I lived in Sydney for 5 years and I absolutely love the transit system there. Going for a hike in the Royal national park is such a breeze with the SCL. The TripView app is also a blessing to plan my commute. The only downside is the ridiculous airport access fee lol though there’s a get around by catching a bus from Mascot
Wish the Waterfront station here is a bit more integrated like how Circular Quay is, with cruise terminal, BC Ferries and Seabus all at one spot
Or even in the BC services app. I don't see why that can't be an acceptable surrogate for drivers ID, care card, PAL, all government ID.
Should just have photos of it all, and scanners to a central database with live data.
isn't this a thing now? or coming very soon, as part of the same modernization that got rid of the license plate stickers?
edit: there's a pilot program with a [publicly available app](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/government-id/bc-wallet), but you can't actually use it as your drivers license yet
This is great, so many jurisdictions around the world cut funding when ridership is down but this just leads to a death spiral for transit and then everyone is stuck with cars and inequality.
For the remaining 18%, how would you guess they are commuting? My guess is automobile for the majority of rides. That being said, there’s no incentive to get someone out of their car and go transiting. Is this what the money (that BC is giving translink) is for?
If ridership is down 18% post pandemic it's largely because people are going out less, working from home, shopping online, or ordering delivery. With gas prices and CoL as high as it is, I doubt people are magically driving more than they used to. Anecdotally, I know people that are just staying home more now that the pandemic is "over," they're just used to it now.
> With gas prices and CoL as high as it is, I doubt people are magically driving more than they used to.
According to the report linked in the comments below, private vehicle volumes are estimated at 108% of pre-pandemic volumes.
Could this be partly due to people who were taking public transit no longer feeling comfortable being in an enclosed space with people who aren't masking?
I got a car specifically at the start of the pandemic because I was required to continue to come to work but the measures in bus and trains seemed half assed and counterproductive (like reducing service when you want people to space out). No regrets.
If you don’t want to read the report, the drop is mainly on the commuting hours for the core rapid transit network.
Weekends are doing better, and the eastern suburbs are above 2019 already.
Translink has had one of the best recoveries for transit in North America.
>It be interesting to know where the drop is. Is it mostly during commute hours or is it in the evenings?
The 82% recovery figure is based on Translinks Report to the Mayor's Council in January and is relevant as of mid-December 2022.
As of December 2022, ridership recovery is actually higher on weekends than weekdays in every sub-region and weekend ridership in the Southwest (Delta/Richmond), Southeast (Surrey/Langley/WR), and Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows is higher than pre-pandemic.
You can find the report here:
https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/about-translink/governance-and-board/council-minutes-and-reports/2023/january/agenda_mayors_council_public_meeting_jan_2023.pdf
Good point. How will they recoop the lost revenue when the people who were commuting aren’t doing that? Like I said, there are zero incentives to get out of your car. I wonder how this’ll play out and who will keep them accountable for the dollars spent?
Zero incentive? Cars are money pits and it's generally much cheaper to use transit. But I suppose if money is something you have too much of and you're not concerned about pollution or supporting better urban planning, then you'd be right, there'd be zero incentive.
Also, translink is in charge of regional car infrastructure too. They're not just a transit org.
I meant governmental incentive- if the government really was serious about their climate initiatives, they’d do something like other places have done. I doubt they are or have ever been that serious about those initiatives, all they want is end user dollars. They have upped the price of transit! How’s that working out for them? Anything to make a buck.
In 2022 Translink increased fares by 2.3%, when inflation was ~8%.
There was no fare increase in 2020, and 2021 was half the scheduled amount (fare increases were scheduled in 2017).
That’s so much better than how much fuel, maintenance, and car purchase costs have increased in the last 3 years.
Oh totally. You are preaching to the choir (I haven’t owned a car since 2002) - it just seems like they are “kicking us when we are down” referring to ridership and raising fares after ridership has been sparse after the pandemic
This is the worst take I've seen today.
Costs were raised by less than inflation after a period of being frozen and that's somehow equal to the government kicking people when they're down? This must be satire.
Tough crowd. What I mean to say is that the *ridership* was down and is slowly trying to get back. How does it make any sense to raise fares to improve ridership?
Because it's not about you, or any individual for that matter. The costs went up considerably, so they raised rates somewhat. That's a net win and you're making it out to be something it isn't.
Apparently that's in the 10 year plan! It's not much but it's a start :D
*["As a first step, the plan funds design,
construction, and operation of multi-stall washrooms
at six busy locations across the transit network."](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/plans-and-projects/ten-year-investment-plan/vision/2022_investment_plan.pdf)*
Here is why people are not using transit from my house to work by car 20 to 30min each way, and this includes crossing a major bridge. If I take the bus hour to an hour and a half one way so under an hour commute by car or between two and a half and three hours by transit. Also, where are all the carbon tax monies and gas tax levies both federal and provincial in this situation? Is there a breakdown of money collected and spent same with icbc profits where is it being spent? I've traveled a fair bit and vancouver has hands down the worst transit of any major city I've been in. This is not a criticism of the people working for transit boots on the ground but of the individual making decisions top-down.
How much of it is going to the 6 figure C-suite folks in the office? I keep seeing more hiring but not seeing any improvements to services for people working night shifts and weekends.
I don’t know what you’re so upset about. There’s only 1,393 Translink employees who makes six figures.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-public-sector-salaries-database-sunshine-list
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> Global News has learned the organization is getting $479 million of budget surplus money > Ridership is about 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels but revenue collection accounts for about 75 per cent. > The mayors’ council made a formal request last month to the federal government to provide $250 million in additional emergency funds to be matched by the B.C. government. However, the province has concluded it does not expect that money to come from Ottawa so they are providing $479 million to the organization.
>> Global News has learned the organization is getting $479 million of budget surplus money > >> Ridership is about 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels but revenue collection accounts for about 75 per cent. > >> The mayors’ council made a formal request last month to the federal government to provide $250 million in additional emergency funds to be matched by the B.C. government. However, the province has concluded it does not expect that money to come from Ottawa so they are providing $479 million to the organization. Good on the province for stepping up and providing nearly all of the funding required. Shame that Ottawa doesn't think this is a priority.
Don't worry. We'll be a priority again during an election year. ;)
In fairness Ottawa provided a lot of transit relief during the pandemic. This is on top of the $14.9B promises made in 2021. I'm guessing Ottawa feels pretty tapped out by now.
TTC cut service because it couldn't get funding I thought. Writing was in the wall for us if precious Toronto couldn't get money. Ottawa would rather spend money on exciting capital projects they can attach their name to, not boring operational costs especially outside of Toronto and Quebec.
They’re finding two SkyTrain expansions currently underway. It’s disappointing that they can’t step up now, but we are okay covering that.
Didn't they put up a huge amount for the Langley and Broadway things?
Ottawa barely recognises there's a country west of Sudbury on the best of days.
Why would Ottawa get involved in this? BC was unwilling to provide the funding until they had a budget surplus. Ottawas fiscal position is far worse, and far worse for so many Canadians. Forking over a quarter billion so BC can subsidize bus driver salaries doesn't make any sense.
except that this money is inevitably going to disappear into a black hole just like the money BC Ferries got. how much do you want to bet that both of these dysfunctional mismanaged entities will be right back at square one in short order after some other unforeseen situation arises? instead of all these handouts to friends and family, the gov't could have just divvied up the loot and sent everyone in the province a cheque to pay their own bills or spend as they wish. i mean after all, this was all our money to begin with
Do you actually think Translink is dysfunctional? Transit isn’t perfect here but it’s arguably the best in all of North America.
You should see how dysfunctional their maintenance department is. A friend was working on skytrain for years. They accomplish maybe 45 minutes worth of work in a day. They take naps on company time, watch movies and just generally waste the day. The parts department is often to blame as they have no idea what they are doing. Everyone is so overly specialized that they have a different *department* for doors and door actuators. It’s insane. Translink needs some serious external audits of exactly what goes on. Yes you want some surplus manpower available in case something goes wrong not that much.
And yet it is arguably the best transit system in NA depending on how much you love/hate the NY metro system
I think they're saying it could still be *more* efficient - just because it's the best doesn't mean it doesn't have room for improvement.
Sure the transit system works. But as a contractor who actually repairs things with a budget in mind the waste in their maintenance department is obscene. Down vote all you like.
Thats pretty typical of all maintenance departments though. Your either bored out of your mind, or you have 30 minutes to fix everything. You need to be staffed for the peak because you never know when it will occur. I've worked with private sector maintenance that works the same say. Plus you can try to be proactive but Ops usually has all the clout and they tell maintenance to screw off with their preventative shit. Think of Star Trek. Sometimes its a Geordi episode and he needs to invert the warpcore and deflect the repulsor array all inside an hour. But most episodes engineering is probably just hanging out down there, doing nothing because everything works that day, which means you have 50 engineers down there sleeping in the Jeffries tubes, or playing poker or whatever.
Lower Decks had an episode about exactly this. The captain found out about 'buffer time', tried to eliminate it, and ended up stressing everyone out to the point that they were so singularly focused on doing the make-work tasks that they could not possibly see or address the issues that weren't explicitly accounted for.
I own an industrial maintenance contracting company and I am going to disagree with you. The levels of overstaffing there are out of this world. Getting to the point where you have separate departments for doors AND door actuators? Give me a break. The levels of specialization have become insane. Remember, this isn’t like a factory floor where that ONE machine absolutely has to run this afternoon. They have spare busses and skytrain cars they can swap out. There is always a few in the shop getting an overhaul and if they had an effectively managed parts supply system they could keep guys busy. But because of over-specialization if that one guy doesn’t have THE one part he just sits around. And that is the *culture* there. The entire organization is built around insane inefficiency. The parts department is even slower and causes massive bottlenecks. This was like this BEFORE the pandemic. I can just imagine how much worse it is with the parts shortages now. My friend there (who I used to employ for years and know quite well) spent 3 years there and eventually quit from boredom.
What you just described is basically every vehicle repair shop ever. If anything, it is reassuring to know that they are overstaffed rather than understaffed.
Nope. I have spent 3 decades in trades, 8 in vehicle repair shops and 15 years running my indistrial maintenance contracting company. Trades people keep busy. You have to. The overhead on a shop is crazy. If you don’t have mad throughput you go bankrupt. Overstaffing slightly is important with a transit system. Shit happens. Overstaffing by 500% is just government bloat.
>Overstaffing by 500% If that's even remotely true, you should contact CBC Go Public, Justin McElroy, etc. Any half decent journalist would jump at the chance to investigate such corruption. As a taxpayer I look forward to seeing this egregious waste of our money being brought to light.
McElroy might be a good one. But it’s like complaining about bad slow service from ICBC. Good luck.
> You should see how dysfunctional their maintenance department is. A friend was working on skytrain for years. They accomplish maybe 45 minutes worth of work in a day. They take naps on company time, watch movies and just generally waste the day. The parts department is often to blame as they have no idea what they are doing. You'd have more of a case to make if you could actually prove any of this.
What do you want me to do, walk around filming them? Talk to people who work there. I knew both a maintenance guy and a guy in the paint department. It is the slackest job you can imagine. Both have now left. The mechanic went to engineering school and the painter retired. I have zero connections down there now.
👍 Great Job. Now if we can just get more of those mini train compass things!
from an instagram post they did, it seems like they will make more keychains, just might not be the same skytrain ones that were sold out on day 1
I want a bus one 🙏
Seabus for me please.
[удалено]
there is some leaks online on [cptdb](https://cptdb.ca/topic/13213-transit-service-discussion-articulatedconventionalshuttleskytrainseabus/?do=findComment&comment=961549), and supposedly you can use the trip planning feature to look ahead to see the changes, but it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t
I feel gangster as fuck whipping mine out. The coolest part is that the headlights light up when you place it on the transit gate.
Now that’s what I like to hear!
Lol true! But what I really want is distance-based smart fares (instead of zoning), better inter-suburb skytrain connections (eg: a Richmond-Surrey-Coquitlam route), and smartphone app integration for the Compass Card!
distance based fares and smartphone app is coming as part of compass V2, which is coming within 10 years iirc
Ten years?? Goddamn that's a long time.
someone mentioned that it was coming in 2025 but i’ll need to double check
Considering some cities has their fare system in the 90s and already have distance based billing while we are stuck with zones w/ a system that was bought in the New Millennium and only implemented mid 2010s’ is just pathetic.
I ride the R3 whenever I can, because I know it’s a future potential route. Maple Ridge getting the SkyTrain is inevitable. Whether it’s from Langley down 200th or Coquitlam down Lougheed. I
I agree, a line extension along the north of the fraser all the way to Mission will probably happen one day.
It will be both, eventually. A hub/exchange at Maple Meadows WCE station connecting Langley to Coquitlam, and extending into Maple Ridge
I’m so salty I never got to get them :(
I'd settle for an app that I can add to my Apple Wallet.
Waste of money.
It's no more expensive than the normal cards
We need more train lines.
We are currently in the process of getting 2. Write to your mayors if you want more.
Are the two the Langley tram and North Shore Skytrain plan?
Well one of them is the broadway expansion.
The most needed extension ever. Pissed it’s not going to UBC. Like WTF?
Talk to Ken Sim. They were in the process of trying to secure funding, but Ken Sim didn’t push for it with the new Mayor’s Council
50% of riders get off before Arbutus, and it's much easier to fund and build a $3.5b train than a $7b train
It's going to get built at some point and next time it'll cost $10 billion, just build it now and be done with it.
Except asking for double the budget would have added four or five years to the fundraising stage. For something that hadn't been surveyed or designed or engineered
There are like 4 other higher priority places to put a new Skytrain line rather than an extension to UBC that drops half its ridership 5 months of the year…
Broadway and Surrey-Langley SkyTrain
Broadway Subway is already tunneling. Surrey-Langley’s funding has been secured.
North shore is likely to be BRT first but in the 10 year plan call out exploring the option of a SkyTrain as well. A BRT can be built much quicker.
I'm honestly really liking TransLink's 10 year plan with all the new RapidBus, Express and BRT routes. We need a much stronger core network and we needed it 20 years ago, and this plan will actually help catch things up a bit.
Good! Sustainability comes from walking, biking, and public transport, not investment in highways and suburban sprawl. Suburbs and exurbs actually cost us money in the long run, and we should focus on urban infill and densification instead.
Amen. I really wish our transportation network was more robust. Getting to work and back is OK but most other trips feel like a chore. I'm either cycling on shared roads and dodging cars or I'm waiting 15 mins for a bus that still has to sit in traffic. Vancouver is great compared to the rest of NA but until we stop treating transit/cyclists as an afterthought our cities will continue to be car dependant nightmares.
I was in Ontario recently and literally all I could think about was how I missed Vancouvers transit. The highway interchanges there are as large as those in the US and despite having a larger transit system than Vancouvers, Toronto's system just wasnt as nice as ours
The only thing Toronto Transit got right was the Union-Pearson train. Was super easy to burn a long layover.
> Getting to work and back is OK but most other trips feel like a chore. This is basically it in a nutshell for me. Work and back on the bus is tolerable since it's one and done. Anything else almost always involves a bus change or a mode change (e.g. Bus -> Skytrain, etc).
Ridership is down due to people working from home, which is more sustainable than transit.
100 upvotes on reddit… shit show of negative comments on facebook, aka boomer central
The 66 Fraser Valley Express bus desperately needs funding for a huge expansion too, that bus is ridiculously packed all the time
The province continues to refuse to give BCT a dime for service hour expansion despite the FVX recording 200% of 2019 ridership. No swing ridings outside of immediate Metro Vancouver unfortunately. "Unprecedented investment in transit in the Fraser Valley" by the way. Yeah no there's basically nothing other than one exchange lol.
You’re not wrong.
Not part of TransLink
Hopefully this is enough money to finally get Compass added to Apple Wallet, it’s the one thing keeping me from ditching my physical wallet
this isn’t what the funding is about, it’s about keeping fares stable for transit users, supporting public transit infrastructure avoiding service cuts and enable transit expansion plans needed to respond to growing communities [source](https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/1636100223725613056?s=46&t=_3Kge3N0BJFAicfd6CGD4w)
From the press conference it was to maintain the [translink 10-year plan](https://www.translink.ca/plans-and-projects/strategies-plans-and-guidelines/transit-and-transportation-planning/ten-year-investment-plan) without cutting services or increasing fares.
If they were smart, they’d be doing more merch around limited edition passes that cost extra and novelty passes like keychains. There’s clearly a demand for these.
those don’t cost any more than a normal compass card actually, it’s still the same 6 dollar deposit
Right… they should charge more for those obviously. There’s high demand for novelty items that have the same functionality. The passes are so bland.
They aren't allowed to charge more per the transit tarriff. Therefore translink takes a loss releasing items like that
I feel like there is a very simple way around it. Small compass chip, $6. Funny chip holder shaped like a bus, $20.
That's not a bad idea actually
Well that’s silly for merch. Is that set by the government? They should change that rule for custom merch 😬
https://www.translink.ca/about-us/about-translink/bylaws Translink passed it as a bylaw. So they are the ones to be able to change it. Doubt that will happen, because they have a strong union who will oppose changes like these from coming to fruition.
why would the transit workers union oppose a carve-out for novelty merch lol
Because it creates a sense of unfairness for people who are lower income.
Australia has it on their opal system. The Vancouver system is basically a watered down version of what we have in Sydney. Don't know why we need to reinvent things and waste money, instead of just replicating the system to Vancouver
I lived in Sydney for 5 years and I absolutely love the transit system there. Going for a hike in the Royal national park is such a breeze with the SCL. The TripView app is also a blessing to plan my commute. The only downside is the ridiculous airport access fee lol though there’s a get around by catching a bus from Mascot Wish the Waterfront station here is a bit more integrated like how Circular Quay is, with cruise terminal, BC Ferries and Seabus all at one spot
Isn't that basically the same here? If you leave from YVR and don't have a transit pass it costs $5 extra.
Yep, but they charge more over there
The backend for every payment system is different. Each entity works with apple to enable it, similar to banks…
They also need to allow us to put our drivers ID in there. Then I’m truly gone.
Or even in the BC services app. I don't see why that can't be an acceptable surrogate for drivers ID, care card, PAL, all government ID. Should just have photos of it all, and scanners to a central database with live data.
Agreed. I'm so tired of having a wallet. It's totally bunk.
isn't this a thing now? or coming very soon, as part of the same modernization that got rid of the license plate stickers? edit: there's a pilot program with a [publicly available app](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/government-id/bc-wallet), but you can't actually use it as your drivers license yet
That is probably an apple issue instead of a compass issue. Asking too much for a processing fee.
This is great, so many jurisdictions around the world cut funding when ridership is down but this just leads to a death spiral for transit and then everyone is stuck with cars and inequality.
For the remaining 18%, how would you guess they are commuting? My guess is automobile for the majority of rides. That being said, there’s no incentive to get someone out of their car and go transiting. Is this what the money (that BC is giving translink) is for?
If ridership is down 18% post pandemic it's largely because people are going out less, working from home, shopping online, or ordering delivery. With gas prices and CoL as high as it is, I doubt people are magically driving more than they used to. Anecdotally, I know people that are just staying home more now that the pandemic is "over," they're just used to it now.
> With gas prices and CoL as high as it is, I doubt people are magically driving more than they used to. According to the report linked in the comments below, private vehicle volumes are estimated at 108% of pre-pandemic volumes.
Could this be partly due to people who were taking public transit no longer feeling comfortable being in an enclosed space with people who aren't masking?
I'm sure there's a variety of independent and/or associated factors contributing.
I got a car specifically at the start of the pandemic because I was required to continue to come to work but the measures in bus and trains seemed half assed and counterproductive (like reducing service when you want people to space out). No regrets.
It be interesting to know where the drop is. Is it mostly during commute hours or is it in the evenings?
If you don’t want to read the report, the drop is mainly on the commuting hours for the core rapid transit network. Weekends are doing better, and the eastern suburbs are above 2019 already. Translink has had one of the best recoveries for transit in North America.
>It be interesting to know where the drop is. Is it mostly during commute hours or is it in the evenings? The 82% recovery figure is based on Translinks Report to the Mayor's Council in January and is relevant as of mid-December 2022. As of December 2022, ridership recovery is actually higher on weekends than weekdays in every sub-region and weekend ridership in the Southwest (Delta/Richmond), Southeast (Surrey/Langley/WR), and Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows is higher than pre-pandemic. You can find the report here: https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/about-translink/governance-and-board/council-minutes-and-reports/2023/january/agenda_mayors_council_public_meeting_jan_2023.pdf
I'd expect many have gone hybrid or remote and won't commute.
Good point. How will they recoop the lost revenue when the people who were commuting aren’t doing that? Like I said, there are zero incentives to get out of your car. I wonder how this’ll play out and who will keep them accountable for the dollars spent?
Zero incentive? Cars are money pits and it's generally much cheaper to use transit. But I suppose if money is something you have too much of and you're not concerned about pollution or supporting better urban planning, then you'd be right, there'd be zero incentive. Also, translink is in charge of regional car infrastructure too. They're not just a transit org.
I meant governmental incentive- if the government really was serious about their climate initiatives, they’d do something like other places have done. I doubt they are or have ever been that serious about those initiatives, all they want is end user dollars. They have upped the price of transit! How’s that working out for them? Anything to make a buck.
In 2022 Translink increased fares by 2.3%, when inflation was ~8%. There was no fare increase in 2020, and 2021 was half the scheduled amount (fare increases were scheduled in 2017). That’s so much better than how much fuel, maintenance, and car purchase costs have increased in the last 3 years.
Oh totally. You are preaching to the choir (I haven’t owned a car since 2002) - it just seems like they are “kicking us when we are down” referring to ridership and raising fares after ridership has been sparse after the pandemic
This is the worst take I've seen today. Costs were raised by less than inflation after a period of being frozen and that's somehow equal to the government kicking people when they're down? This must be satire.
Tough crowd. What I mean to say is that the *ridership* was down and is slowly trying to get back. How does it make any sense to raise fares to improve ridership?
Because it's not about you, or any individual for that matter. The costs went up considerably, so they raised rates somewhat. That's a net win and you're making it out to be something it isn't.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I read your 'incentive' as an economic incentive and it makes sense to me - there isn't one.
A ridership drop of 20% for commuters is people working one day a week at home. I'd say that makes up a major chunk of it.
Headline tomorrow: TransLink CEO gets major bonus
Wtf why do we have to address "declining ridership"? People are working from home... That's better than taking public transit in every way.
Because the alternative is reduced service and lost jobs which will negatively affect a lot of people.
It's a service. You tailor the service to the demand. Trying to address the demand to meet the service is silly and a bureaucratic waste of money.
[удалено]
Apparently that's in the 10 year plan! It's not much but it's a start :D *["As a first step, the plan funds design, construction, and operation of multi-stall washrooms at six busy locations across the transit network."](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/plans-and-projects/ten-year-investment-plan/vision/2022_investment_plan.pdf)*
So more drug users can hang around skytrain and the bathrooms
Incoming raises for all of the upper-level execs.
Here is why people are not using transit from my house to work by car 20 to 30min each way, and this includes crossing a major bridge. If I take the bus hour to an hour and a half one way so under an hour commute by car or between two and a half and three hours by transit. Also, where are all the carbon tax monies and gas tax levies both federal and provincial in this situation? Is there a breakdown of money collected and spent same with icbc profits where is it being spent? I've traveled a fair bit and vancouver has hands down the worst transit of any major city I've been in. This is not a criticism of the people working for transit boots on the ground but of the individual making decisions top-down.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan called Translink "the beast that eats money" [https://youtu.be/I26AQWwlgg0?t=443](https://youtu.be/I26AQWwlgg0?t=443)
How much of it is going to the 6 figure C-suite folks in the office? I keep seeing more hiring but not seeing any improvements to services for people working night shifts and weekends.
I don’t know what you’re so upset about. There’s only 1,393 Translink employees who makes six figures. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-public-sector-salaries-database-sunshine-list