People in the business community are starting to wake up to the impending referendum on new sources of funding for TransLink. The premier promised it would be held with or before the November 14, 2014, civic election, and it’s now clear the referendum is going ahead, in spite of the risks.
The biggest risk, of course, is that it goes down, locking us into a continuing decline in transit service in Metro Vancouver, a process already underway. Writing in BIV’s GreenSpace magazine, UBC president Stephen Toope notes there are 2,000 bus pass-ups a day along the Broadway corridor, the province’s second biggest employment district, with more jobs than the next eight biggest town centres combined. Half a million people a year are kept waiting while full buses drive by on this corridor, creating transit congestion that matches what car drivers face in other areas of the region. Oddly, while car congestion costs are consistently assessed and circulated, the costs of transit congestion are rarely measured and never discussed.
Rapid rail transit along the Broadway corridor, already the busiest bus route in North America, is vital for the growth of the employment centres along the corridor, in particular the health sciences and hospital complexes and UBC.
The same pressures are pinching economic growth south of the Fraser, where Surrey impatiently awaits long-promised rapid buses and a SkyTrain extension to move people at a fraction of the cost of new roads, highways, private car investments, police, pollution and sickness from car dependency.
Winning a referendum on transit funding is very tough in an atmosphere of “no new taxes,” especially when those costs of not improving transit are never on the ballot.
Referendums are costly and complex. In Los Angeles, the combined information and political campaigns to win a 2008 ballot initiative cost more than $8 million. In St. Louis, a 2010 transit tax ballot question won after only $1.5 million in spending, whereas last year in Atlanta, in spite of widespread agreement that traffic was unbearable, a $9 million campaign for transit funding failed. Organizers said the scope of the campaign was comparable to electing a new governor.
The local mayors in Metro Van are so far sitting this one out, daring the province to blink first, guarding their property taxes.
In every one of these campaigns, involvement from the business community was pivotal. In Metro Van, the silence from business leaders on this referendum is deafening.
In the past few weeks, the development industry, in particular the Urban Development Institute, has started to flicker to life, prodded by early leadership from UBC students.
Developers have a lot to lose.
The only bright spots on the real estate horizon are transit-oriented developments, where new buyers are lining up get an $8,000/year raise from not having to own a car. How are developers going to deliver if the transit doesn’t show up or existing transit keeps getting cut back?
The future of the region’s economic health really depends on the premier. The referendum was her idea, so she has to step up to make sure it succeeds.
No one has any idea how this referendum will be structured, who will organize it (“Not us,” say the mayors), what funding options will be on the ballot, what projects will be built – or not – because of it, what the question(s) will be or how much public funding – if any – is available to support which sides.
The time to sort all that out and have any chance of winning is desperately short. Does anyone care? •
