[news] TransLink Founder Attacks TransLink Plan

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The Georgia Straight	 November 6-13, 2003

TransLink Founder Attacks TransLink Plan

By Charlie Smith 

One of the founders of TransLink has claimed that the regional
transportation authority is making a big mistake by funding the proposed
Richmond/Airport/Vancouver Rapid Transit project and replacing Vancouver's
trolley buses. 

TransLink's $370-million contribution to the RAV project and its
$273-million expenditure on new trolley buses account for more than half of
the transportation authority's $1.2-billion capital-expenditure proposals
between 2005 to 2007. The TransLink board is expected to vote on the
three-year financial strategy in December. 

On November 4, White Rock economist Marvin Shaffer, cochair of the
transition team that created TransLink in 1999, told a Vancouver city
council committee that the transportation authority will be required to
inject a $36-million-per-year subsidy into the RAV project over the long
term. 

Shaffer said that over the shorter term, TransLink's subsidy may increase to
$45 million per year. "It also recognizes that senior governments will be
contributing over $100 million per year in subsidy," he said. 

In a report submitted to council, Shaffer claimed that TransLink has not
provided any economic justification for building the RAV line at this time.
He acknowledged that RAV would provide "time savings" for transit users, but
suggested this would come at a "tremendous" cost. 

"Greater separation of bus service with more extensive bus priority, queue
jumpers and signal control would in itself improve travel times and
reliability," Shaffer wrote in the report. "Multiple corridor rapid bus
service could provide even more benefit. The benefits of these rapid bus
improvements would not equal the benefit of RAV, but they could be achieved
at a fraction of the cost, serve the passenger load well beyond 2010, and
free up resources for higher priority requirements in the region." 

Shaffer told council that there was no economic or environment justification
for the trolley-replacement plan. He said Vancouver is "almost alone" among
North American cities in pursuing electric trolley buses, which cost more
than twice as much per vehicle as the latest generation of diesel buses. 

The federal government has estimated the economic cost of greenhouse-gas
emissions at $15 per tonne, Shaffer added. He said that TransLink would be
spending $150 per tonne to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from buying new
trolley buses over diesel buses. 

"TransLink would have a more effective greenhouse-gas program by tree
planting than it could by buying trolley buses at this time," Shaffer told
council. 

Supporters of the trolley buses say these vehicles don't create air
pollution and they are much quieter than diesel buses, improving livability.


Shaffer urged council to tell TransLink to reconsider the RAV project and
the trolley-replacement plan. Later that afternoon, however, Mayor Larry
Campbell and five councillors--Jim Green, Peter Ladner, Raymond Louie, Tim
Stevenson, and Sam Sullivan--approved a staff recommendation to endorse
TransLink's three-year financial strategy and 10-year outlook. Four
Coalition of Progressive Electors councillors--Fred Bass, Tim Louis, Anne
Roberts, and Ellen Woodsworth--voted against the majority. 




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