Watts steps down from TransLink position

[VanCvl]

Now that Watts is leaving, the effectiveness of TransLink to move forward with any sort of new project in the region seems to be fading quickly.

By Jeff Nagel - Surrey North Delta Leader

Published: February 03, 2010 5:00 AM
Updated: February 03, 2010 9:16 AM

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is stepping aside as chair of the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation.

A replacement is to be voted in at a meeting today (Wednesday) at TransLink headquarters.

The mayors’ council controls TransLink’s purse strings and last fall agreed to increase transit fares, the local gas tax and the tax on pay parking lots to raise an extra $130 million a year and avoid drastic cuts to the cash-strapped transit system.

After two years at the helm, Watts leaves the chair with TransLink on financial life support and no sign yet of any agreement with senior governments to bring in new funding sources needed to expand the rapid transit network.
“I have a lot going on here in the City of Surrey,” Watts said. “I have a finite amount of time as to where I can put my energy.”

Watts said she’ll continue to work with other mayors on regional transportation issues, while focusing more heavily on Surrey-specific transportation plans.

Metro Vancouver mayors, TransLink officials and TransLink’s appointed board of directors were in broad agreement last fall that TransLink needs much more money – approaching $450 million a year – to extend rapid transit in Surrey and Vancouver and out to the Tri-Cities.

A $122 annual vehicle levy on every car in the region would have raised more cash, but mayors also wanted new funding or powers from Victoria to raise money – potentially through road pricing or regional tolling.

Transportation minister Shirley Bond has so far rejected those ideas and pressed the mayors to simply raise property taxes higher, a measure they refuse to consider.

A technical working group with TransLink and transportation ministry staff has been examining potential reforms to TransLink suggested in a report from the province’s Comptroller General in November.

Watts was unable to point to significant progress so far in resolving questions over TransLink’s future finances.

“We need a vision for the future,” Watts said, adding all three levels of government must come together around a new plan if Metro Vancouver is to absorb another million residents over the next two decades.

Cities need certainty TransLink can build new lines or else they can’t make appropriate land-use decisions, she said.

Watts dismissed speculation she is clearing her agenda for a run at the leadership of the B.C. Liberals, if the premier steps down.

“No, no, no,” she said. “We’re building a new downtown core, we’re dealing with densifying our town centres and making sure they’re livable and workable.”

Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini said he has been told the province will introduce new legislation this spring to restructure TransLink – for the second time in less than three years.

“My advice to them is to take the whole thing back,” Trasolini said, adding the province exerts ultimate control on most key decisions anyway.


jnagel@surreyleader.com

[Gordon]

Diane Watts seemed to be doing a good job as Chair of the Mayor's Council.

It's about time that the Provincial Government took Translink's financial situation seriously
A $120 vehicle levy would go along way to solving a good portion of funding problems.

Can Translink bring in a Vehicle levy without the government'sokay?

[The_Henry_Man]

I think the best solution right now is to have the Provincial government take back the responsibility of Translink, and absorb it into BC Transit, if the current situation with the funding crunch is no longer tenable. And BC should also take over Translink's responsibility of building and maintaining roads under Metro Vancouver's jurisdiction ASAP. Translink is a public transit agency and should only be responsible for transit.

Not surprisingly, Translink's existence is just another failed product of the old NDP. That's why the BC NDP scares the crap out of me.

As for future rapid transit projects, as long as Translink is not hijacked by any loonie-left radicals, special interest or NIMBY groups, we should be fine.

From Dianne Watt's comments, it's looks very possible that Metro Vancouver will become another Twin-Cities, similar to Minneapolis-St. Paul in the future, in terms of regional planning.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by The_Henry_Man

Not surprisingly, Translink's existence is just another failed product of the old NDP. That's why the BC NDP scares the crap out of me.

Uhhhh.. BC Liberal Minister Falcon "reformed" Translink only a few years ago. The Province loves to give Translink all the responsibility, but only a few insufficient, yet politically suicidal forms of revenue to pay for it.

For the record I don't think the current BC NDP could run a hot dog stand, let alone this province.

[lightrail]

Originally Posted by The_Henry_Man

I think the best solution right now is to have the Provincial government take back the responsibility of Translink, and absorb it into BC Transit, if the current situation with the funding crunch is no longer tenable. And BC should also take over Translink's responsibility of building and maintaining roads under Metro Vancouver's jurisdiction ASAP. Translink is a public transit agency and should only be responsible for transit.

Not surprisingly, Translink's existence is just another failed product of the old NDP. That's why the BC NDP scares the crap out of me.

As for future rapid transit projects, as long as Translink is not hijacked by any loonie-left radicals, special interest or NIMBY groups, we should be fine.

From Dianne Watt's comments, it's looks very possible that Metro Vancouver will become another Twin-Cities, similar to Minneapolis-St. Paul in the future, in terms of regional planning.

To be fair, the semi-private model of Translink today is a Liberal product, not the NDP.

The original Translink was an attempt to bring funding and provider together. The idea was that a single provider (Translink) would run the roads and transit in an integrated fashion, which would in theory be more efficient and forward thinking.

Under BC Transit, the local Transit Commission would set fares and routes with funding support from Victoria. The MOT would decide on highway construction; often this resulted in increased capacity to the detriment of the public transit system (build more roads and more people will drive).

Translink is a failure, simply because the Provincial government will not relinquish control to the regional authority. If Translink worked properly, it would be accountable to the people of the region (the old NDP model) it would have Provincial representation (the old NDP model has this, even if the Province never filled the seats) and would be able to make its own decisions on funding without having to get approval from the Province, or having the Province undermine its efforts. Shirley Bond is a disaster as a Transportation Minister - from what I've seen, she won't be approving any new funding. But if she really supported the regional model, she should be pushing to remove the need for her (Provincial) approval.

[mezzanine]

I think things came to a head with the old model with the C-line. When there was a provincial priority (the c-line) that ran against local priorities (evergreen first, then c-line), PLUS IMO regionalism/factionalism (mayors failing to realign priorities to reflect political realities) then falcon did a re-org, and unfortunately, cut provincial ties and made translink a nice scapegoat for transit problems.

There is no clear solution for this IMO. I fear if we do revert to the older NDP-model, there will be less politcal will to build broadway (aside from vancouver. other regions may downgrade the line to cheaper options (LRT) to get more overall funds) Corrigan was able to use translink as a soapbox to highlight his problems with evergreen being delayed again, but jeopardizing the c-line and regional transit in the process. (it was cancelled by translink twice!)

Believe it or not, it could be worse - the TTC/toronto is having an awful time trying to get transit city off the ground. The TTC has been the focus of a lot of scorn. One of the candidates is trying to cancel a lot of the transit initiatives, including bike lanes, to capture votes in the suburban areas post-amalgamation. The TTC still uses paper transfers and tokens of all places.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/...f-2010-transit

Best case scenario? Maybe the COV can put a replacement that can advocate for finishing evergreen, then broadway. Gregor or Geoff Meggs seems to be my pick. Bonus points for advocating bike infrastrucure in COV already. if they can play nice with victoria, that might be a way out...

[mezzanine]

For the record, the voting-for-status-quo and avoiding brinkmanship was also important. if we did vote for drastic cuts, victoria would probably take over translink but cut a lot of bus service in the meantime. a lot of places, esp in the USA had to cut, but not us.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Best case scenario? Maybe the COV can put a replacement that can advocate for finishing evergreen, then broadway. Gregor or Geoff Meggs seems to be my pick. Bonus points for advocating bike infrastrucure in COV already. if they can play nice with victoria, that might be a way out...

Hmmm, I'm not sure that would be so easy, there's a lot of COV hate in the Metro area.

Throw the SOF a bone by building $500m of LRT in Surrey or something, at the same time or just before Broadway...

[NetMapel]

There goes an influential voice from south of Fraser River...

[Zassk]

I sometimes wonder which of the cities and municipalities will get fed up with waiting on Translink and build their own LRT or streetcar to serve their needs. A few of the larger jurisdictions like Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, maybe others, could afford $100-200 million to build a few km of their own rail system in a strategic location, while making sure that it connects with a SkyTrain station somewhere. At some point this will be a cheaper option than road construction for one of them, especially if new developments can be coerced to pay for it, and/or if P3 is on the table.

[mrjauk]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Hmmm, I'm not sure that would be so easy, there's a lot of COV hate in the Metro area.

Throw the SOF a bone by building $500m of LRT in Surrey or something, at the same time or just before Broadway...

I concur with the sentiment of your post, but not the specifics. I don't know if there's $500 million to be had, but we could at least bring the inter-urban back, could we not? And maybe we could add some express bus lanes, which would provide the foundation for LRT.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by mrjauk

I concur with the sentiment of your post, but not the specifics. I don't know if there's $500 million to be had, but we could at least bring the inter-urban back, could we not? And maybe we could add some express bus lanes, which would provide the foundation for LRT.

Well, we don't have $200M to finish Evergreen, but assuming the day comes when $3B is available for a UBC line, another $500M can be found for Surrey.

[DKaz]

I'm pretty sure the BC Liberals are going to fully fund the Evergreen Line, it's in their best political interests to do so. Maybe in 2013 they can do an early partial opening to Burquitlam in time for the election campaign.

[VanCvl]

TransLink has a disfunctional governance model (in both the new and old format) because the provincial government never wanted to give up their power. The structure could have worked if provincial seats were appointed to the board.

The problem with the TransLink now is that their CEO quit, the chair of the Mayor's council quit, and questions are still being raised about how taxpayer's money is being spent without any public input.

Another problem that doesn't get much publicity is the SOF folks feel like they have been paying into the system but haven't seen much back for transit service. I guess time will tell where the province wants to take this.

[Whalleyboy]

It would be nice to see translink break it self into two groups one for north one for south of the Fraser this way the money comes in from the areas they are looking after. This way people south of the Fraser wouldnt feel there just giving up there money to Vancouver and would have no one but themselfs to blame if there isnt enough money. At translink current rate and them cutting off the b-line i could see SoF kicking them out soon. I remember seeing some of the people on the 2040 plan thing i think it was yelling out for where is better service SoF
I for one would actually support kicking them out right now after they cut the B-line.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by DKaz

I'm pretty sure the BC Liberals are going to fully fund the Evergreen Line, it's in their best political interests to do so. Maybe in 2013 they can do an early partial opening to Burquitlam in time for the election campaign.

They will have plenty of photo ops on the new PMB for election time.

And they'll be making all kinds of promises around then, which may or may not happen (LRT across the PMB for example).

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by Whalleyboy

It would be nice to see translink break it self into two groups one for north one for south of the Fraser this way the money comes in from the areas they are looking after. This way people south of the Fraser wouldnt feel there just giving up there money to Vancouver and would have no one but themselfs to blame if there isnt enough money. At translink current rate and them cutting off the b-line i could see SoF kicking them out soon. I remember seeing some of the people on the 2040 plan thing i think it was yelling out for where is better service SoF
I for one would actually support kicking them out right now after they cut the B-line.

But translink did do something big for SoF, the bus expansion. For those who don't take the bus in SoF, this really was like night and day. Buses came more frequently in the AM and had ~ quarter hour service mid-day. This doesn't seem like much, esp to vancouverites but bus service was abysmal prior to this. Unfortunately, this isn't as sexy as rail service and often goes unreported.

And this service isn't cheap, it is the reason the comptroller general stated was reponsible for translink's structureal debt.

The majority of the $130 million structural deficit faced by TransLink is a
result of factors other than Canada Line, such as the increase in the
operational cost of the bus fleet, particularly into lower ridership,
geographically sparse areas.

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/OCG/ias/pdf...governance.pdf

Good things though - I take the 501, 375 and 345 off and on, and I am seeing ridership growing. we are changing culture in SoF. I think a B-line would be a realistic near-term goal for SOF to get. If people talk about putting LRT in SoF without changing culture, without building ridership by bus routes, that's just foolhardy. unfortunatley, buses don't make good photo ops.

[NetMapel]

At this rate, even I'm going to have to start supporting kicking out Translink from the south of Fraser River region. The public transit has not been fair to the whole region and it's really depressing for us living south here.

[nname]

Originally Posted by Whalleyboy

It would be nice to see translink break it self into two groups one for north one for south of the Fraser this way the money comes in from the areas they are looking after. This way people south of the Fraser wouldnt feel there just giving up there money to Vancouver and would have no one but themselfs to blame if there isnt enough money. At translink current rate and them cutting off the b-line i could see SoF kicking them out soon. I remember seeing some of the people on the 2040 plan thing i think it was yelling out for where is better service SoF
I for one would actually support kicking them out right now after they cut the B-line.

If you calculate the approximate cost recovery of each region using the ridership, service hours/kms, and fare revenue data from the RTM documents, you wouldn't think this is a good idea at all.

[racc]

Originally Posted by NetMapel

At this rate, even I'm going to have to start supporting kicking out Translink from the south of Fraser River region. The public transit has not been fair to the whole region and it's really depressing for us living south here.

TransLink has provide a lot of money for roads South of the Fraser including the Golden Ears Bridge and the Fraser Highway widening. TransLink paid for around $160 million for the land, project management and other costs that will not be cover by tolls. Even worse, especially with lower than expected traffic levels, it will be years before tolls cover the operating and financing costs on the bridge. Don't forget either, that the first rapid transit line was build to, you guessed it, Surrey. Don't be surprised if you add it all up, that people South of the Fraser are getting their moneys worth from TL.