With Metro Vancouver on the road to a contentious transit funding referendum, Business in Vancouver is examining the issues affecting the region’s transit system and its potential impact on the Lower Mainland’s economy. In this instalment of our business-of-transit series, BIV examines political deadlock over transit in Metro Vancouver. The first instalment in the series (issue 1263, January 14–20) looked at the economic cost of congestion, while the second (issue 1275, April 8–14) explored the gap between funding and demand for public transit in the region.
Transit users in Seattle will soon be waiting longer for the bus and walking farther to get to a stop. On April 22, residents of King County voted to reject a 0.1% sales tax and an annual $60 vehicle fee.
If the measure had succeeded, those taxes would have been in place for the next 10 years and used to fund transit and maintain roads.
Now, politicians say, 72 bus routes will be eliminated and operating hours will be reduced, despite transit ridership in the Seattle area rising to record levels.
What is happening in Seattle is a possible foretaste of transit’s near future in Metro Vancouver, which will face a referendum on transit funding sometime before June 2015.
The referendum – a campaign promise made by Premier Christy Clark in 2013 – is needed to ensure residents have a say on what will be “a substantial new tax,” Jordan Bateman, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told Business in Vancouver.
“The HST lesson showed us that you just can’t impose things on people without getting their say or hearing from them,” Bateman said.
To others, who note that today’s declining transit service hours per capita are the same as they were in 2008, a failed referendum means turning the clock back even further. By 2020, TransLink projects the number of service hours will fall to 2003 levels.
“You’ll take one of the best transit systems in the world and deliberately [mess it up],” said Gordon Price, a former Vancouver city councillor and program director of Simon Fraser University’s city program.
“It would seriously damage the ability of the region to move forward and hence its economic health.”
Who’s driving this bus?
Ever since TransLink was created in 1999, municipal leaders and the provincial government have clashed over its funding and governance. That strife came to a head in 2008 during debate over which major transit project to build next: the Olympics-driven Canada Line or the Evergreen Line to service suburban commuters.
“The province was very interested in building the Canada Line and very frustrated at TransLink’s decision-making process, which was very public and very noisy and almost turned down the Canada Line,” said Ken Cameron, former manager of planning for Metro Vancouver.
The funding challenges have become especially acute since 2012. That year, the province said no to a second try for the vehicle levy, municipal leaders reneged on a planned property-tax increase and TransLink’s commissioner rejected a fare increase.
The power to make operating decisions for TransLink has shifted from regional mayors to an appointed board (part of the political fallout from the fight over the Canada Line), and will now be shared between the board of directors and mayors, a change B.C.’s transportation minister, Todd Stone, announced this February.
But whether that new governance structure will produce sound business decisions, as well as political accountability, remains to be seen.
“The mayors at this point do not feel we have clear enough or adequate influence over the operating budget – the annual budget as opposed to the long-term plans,” said Richard Walton, mayor of the District of North Vancouver and chairman of TransLink’s mayors’ council.
The governance change also came with the requirement that the mayors come up with a fully costed business plan and vision for transit by this June.
Walton said that would be difficult to do in the current funding vacuum.
“Really the message being put out is that it’s okay to do a business plan that shows 10 new bridges and three new SkyTrain lines … but if you don’t have the money to pay for the infrastructure expansion, it’s only half a plan,” he said. “It’s a dream.”
Stone, who was not available for an interview, has also directed the mayors to come up with a referendum question and to lead the campaign.
Where the rubber meets the road
But beyond the more visible political struggles over money and governance is a deeper ideological divide over how transportation will shape the region, say transit watchers.
Critics point to the ease with which Stone approved a 10-lane bridge to replace the aging George Massey Tunnel – evidence, they say, of a provincial preoccupation with automobile infrastructure.
It is likely that Transportation Investment Corp., the Crown corporation responsible for building and implementing tolls on the $3 billion Port Mann Bridge, will also be responsible for the new bridge.
“There are now two transportation authorities in the region able to access the local economy for their revenues, the Transportation Investment Corporation being the other one – with a different agenda for development of the transportation system that is much more road-based,” Cameron said. That, he added, will send the market “the wrong signals.”
“We’ve got the furnace and the air conditioning on full tilt. You have to have some restraint in providing for the automobile in order to give transit a chance in the marketplace.”
By requiring a referendum, Price said, the province has thrown up yet another roadblock to moving forward on 10- and 30-year transit plans already developed by TransLink. Meanwhile, decisions on roads and bridges under provincial jurisdiction continue to go ahead.
“The belief is, as the economic engine and job generator of the province, a balanced transportation strategy is more efficient and more productive for the goals the province has,” Price said. “If you believe that economic growth and job generation are your platform planks, but your jurisdiction is only to build the big roads or the Massey crossing, then you put the real job generation at risk.”
Taxing question
The King County ballot measure in Washington state shows just how tricky it will be to come up with a tax proposal that will be palatable to voters.
Seattle has a relatively high 9.5% sales tax compared with other Washington municipalities (the state’s base sales tax rate is 6.5%, with municipalities able to add to that). And 1.8% of Seattle’s sales tax already goes towards transit.
Like TransLink’s share of the gas tax – a declining revenue source because people are driving less and vehicle efficiency continues to improve – King County’s transit revenues from the sales tax took a beating during the recession.
Voters who said no to the ballot measure weren’t saying no to transit, county executive Dow Constantine told the Seattle Times on April 22. “They are rejecting this particular means of funding Metro [Transit].”
Should TransLink get more of your money?
Absolutely not, says Jordan Bateman, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Bateman argues the agency is top-heavy and wastes money. Despite a 2012 provincial audit that found $41 million in cost savings, Bateman says those efficiencies were mostly found by cutting bus service, not tackling executive pay.
“TransLink needs a complete reorganization,” Bateman said. “This is an agency with at least five boards of directors, an agency with hundreds of overpaid employees.”
However, transit advocates have argued that the cost savings identified by several recent audits don’t come close to meeting TransLink’s funding needs to maintain and improve existing bus service and build projects like the Broadway subway line and Surrey light rail system.
Read the rest of BIV's series on transit and the economy:
Road congestion costing B.C.'s economy billions in lost productivity and stalled job growth
The future of Lower Mainland transit improvements depends on where infrastructure funding comes from and where it will deliver the greatest benefits
Transit mired in money trouble
TransLink can't keep up with demand, but the B.C. government and municipalities have ruled out new funding to put the system back on the track
Bus stops versus transit metro mega-projects starts
Region faces choice: grand plans or down-to-earth service improvements?
