Why are leaders in Toronto smarter than leaders in Metro Vancouver?
Both cities have a remarkably similar problem: the local transportation authority “has an approved plan to build the system we need, but we have nowhere near the funds to pay for it. We have to be open to ways to raise money that are dedicated to getting this done ... We need to move people and goods quickly and easily for our region to be a great place to live, work, play and invest, and yet we’re decades behind in making that happen … Everyone agrees we have a crisis on our hands. We want to give residents a way to say, ‘we need a better system, and we need to find sustainable ways to pay for it’.”
In Vancouver, that’s the message coming from a group of UBC students whose frustration over getting passed up by 99-B-line buses is spilling over into a wider campaign headed into the public domain in September. While every word of that quote rings true in Metro Vancouver, it comes from the mouth of business and political leader John Tory, chairman of the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance (GTCAA), a formidable blue-chip organization that is launching a major community campaign for transportation funding in Metro Toronto this fall.
The GTCAA announced its 27 Regional Transportation Champions –representing more than two million employees, students, customers and members across Metro Toronto and Hamilton – almost to the day that Vancouver was tagged as the most congested city in Canada, and the second-most congested in North America after Los Angeles. That dubious title (based on dubious methodology, it must be said) was won without even counting the real congestion zones east of Burnaby and south of the Fraser.
Two days earlier, a two-year-old group of frustrated volunteers known as the Sustainable Transportation Coalition (STC) was meeting downtown in a boardroom donated by the Fraser Basin Council, over our brown bag lunches, with no budget, no staff and faint hope.
SFU City Program Director Gordon Price’s blunt assessment from his July 3 BIV column (“Transit integral to building transportation bridges – issue 1184; July 3-9) hung in the air: “TransLink has no more money. Gas-tax revenue is down, there’s no new source of funding from the province, no more property tax from the municipalities and not even approval for an anticipated fare increase. Expansion plans for already-promised transit are all off the table.”
Bizarrely, signs on Highway 1 still proudly announce what is not going to happen: “New RapidBus BC Service, Park and Ride” on the new Port Mann Bridge. There will soon be 30 vehicle lanes across the Fraser and not one lane of transit.
Richard Walton, Mayors’ Council chairman and North Vancouver District mayor, told us at the STC meeting nothing will break the impasse until a regional road pricing strategy can be approved that has political support in Surrey. So we took what comfort we could in enlisting our coalition members to support the student-led “Get On Board” campaign for the fall, with a rally, social media and MLA campaigning.
Meanwhile in Toronto, the GTCAA’s first wave of Regional Transportation Champions rolled out: a former federal cabinet minister, senior bankers and insurance executives, trade union leaders, president of the airport authority, religious leaders, president of the World Wildlife Fund, presidents of Oxford Properties and Cadillac Fairview, president of the University of Toronto, the CEO of YWCA Canada, president of the board of trade and many others.
It is astounding that so few people at that level here have grasped the impact of TransLink’s kneecapped funding for our region. The war against the bus has been won. The surrender to car-dependency and congestion and economic distress is complete. We are all casualties.
While Toronto mobilizes, Vancouver business leaders shrug and slip away to the beach. •
