The need for more TransLink funding

A cry for help

TransLink’s frequent transit network, with service every 15 minutes or less

Report on Potential Transit Impacts. TransLink, July 2024.

There’s a close connection between housing and transportation. For example, extending rapid transit (like the Evergreen Line out to Coquitlam) expands the radius of land within a reasonable commute time from downtown Vancouver.

Joseph Heath, writing in 2014:

When I hear people complaining about their various work-life/financial woes, I find that a large fraction of them can be traced back to a chronic undersupply of public goods. For example, one of the major reasons that I spend so much time talking about transit is that bad transit (and brutal congestion) in the entire Hamilton-Oshawa corridor is the major factor driving real estate prices, and real estate prices are the major factor that is squeezing middle class budgets. Canada is not running out of space: if you drive three hours north, you can buy an entire island for the price of a 500 square foot condo in downtown Toronto.

The typical person looks at the household budget and sees that she is having trouble making ends meet. Her mortgage payment is undoubtedly the single largest item, followed by her car lease. And so she thinks, quite naturally, “if I didn’t have to pay so much in taxes, it would be easier to pay these bills.” Yet this is a mistake. The reason the mortgage is so high is that the house is expensive, and the reason that the house is expensive is because of its location, and what makes that location expensive is the commute time between that house and downtown Toronto. If you cut the commute time in half, then she could live twice as far away, and probably pay half the price for the house. I’m not saying I recommend this, I just want to point out that this would not be a small saving, it would be gigantic.

Executive summary from the TransLink report:

TransLink is doing everything possible to avoid transit service cuts. Our focus has been on being as efficient as possible, preparing a 2025 Investment Plan to resolve the funding crisis, and continuing to plan for future expansion to meet regional needs. However, if TransLink’s structural deficit is not addressed, significant expenditure reductions will be required starting in 2026, impacting all areas of TransLink’s mandate.

Due to the magnitude of the financial gap, transit reductions would be in the range of 45-50% overall and include elimination of entire routes plus significant reductions in frequency and start/end times of service. This would include cancelling approximately 145 bus routes, significantly reducing SkyTrain, SeaBus and HandyDART service, and potentially eliminating the West Coast Express. Funding for walking, cycling, and roads programs would also be cut.

These transit reductions would have significant negative consequences for everyone across the region, regardless of how they get around. More than half a million people would no longer be within walking distance of transit, and 175,000 jobs, or more, would no longer be accessible by transit. As people lose access to transit, congestion would worsen, all while our region’s population continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.

Sharing the pain

Cutting transit service by half seems like a false economy. Public transit is like any other public service paid for through taxation - it's a form of collective shopping. My impression is that TransLink does provide good service that's widely used. The question is whether we're willing to pay for it.

We've got limited road space, so we want to use it efficiently. Having a lot of people shift from public transit to driving would be a bad outcome, since it'll result in a lot more traffic congestion.

Costs are increasing, and the major sources of revenue are:

• transit fares (kept low as a way to help low-income households)

• gas tax (diminishing as people switch to electric vehicles)

• property tax

One approach would be to have some combination of the following:

• fare increases - keeping prices low to help low-income households is a leaky bucket, since a lot of the benefit goes to other households

• shift from gas tax to vehicle-miles-travelled tax - see commentary by Michael Dnes in the UK

• property tax increases

• service cuts and other cost-saving measures (which should be less severe with more revenue elsewhere)

More

• TransLink warns half of transit services could be cut without more funding. Tiffany Crawford, Vancouver Sun.

• TransLink collapse: 50% of bus service and 30% of SkyTrain and SeaBus services could be eliminated due to funding shortfall. Kenneth Chan, Daily Hive.

• American Transit and Canadian Transit are Different. Reece Martin, September 2023. Public transit ridership in Canadian cities, including Vancouver, is far higher than in similarly-sized US cities. “When you looked at ridership trends pre-Covid, American systems were stagnant in the 2010s, but Canadian ridership was growing significantly, and the numbers post-Covid are just nuts.”