TransLink has wasted too much of our money over the years to be trusted with more of it.
It's a nightmare list of waste.
Six boards of directors. More than 400 staffers making six figures. Executives cashing in bonuses while raising taxes and fares. The Main Street poodle on a pole.
Transit police making six figures as glorified fare checkers, while working on less than one serious or property crime file a month. The transit police dog squad leaving explosive material on a commercial jetliner during a training exercise. Installing 13 TV screens at a cost of $40,000 each. Bonuses of 25% for every employee who works on a Sunday.
Tens of millions of dollars in Compass Card and fare gate cost overruns. Paying stakeholders with charitable donations to get feedback on a survey. A $30,000 feasibility study for a gondola up Burnaby Mountain that no one seemed to want.
Moving to a shiny new office building in Sapperton while paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for unused office space in Surrey. A quarter-billion dollars in revenue lost to fare evasion since 2000. SkyTrain hiring practices linked to nepotism. Losing $15 million a year to U-Pass fraud. Losing $150,000 to FareSaver theft because security policies were lax. Failing to address bus driver assaults. Blundering sound wall design and installation along the Golden Ears Bridge route.
There's more, unbelievably, but you get the point.
TransLink has made many questionable expenditures over the years, and it's time for taxpayers – the ones footing TransLink's $1.4 billion annual bill – to have their say through a referendum.
An independent review of TransLink, done by the transit commissioner in 2012, showed that "TransLink's funding formula is the best in Canada."
The mix of parking tax, gas tax, BC Hydro levy, transit fares, bridge tolls, AirCare fees and property tax has given TransLink plenty of ways to generate dollars and resulted in "a period of rapid bus and rail expansion, far in excess of any of its Canadian peers."
Yet, TransLink is insatiable in its thirst for more. Like a pyromaniac fidgeting for more matches, the agency wants other taxes – maybe a vehicle levy, perhaps a sales tax, maybe more road tolls or a regional carbon tax – whatever it can shake out of taxpayers' pockets to fund its dreams of a $23 billion spending spree.
Interestingly, the chair of TransLink's board of directors (the big board – not the five that exist under it) seems to disagree with her senior executives: "But slower growth may change the assumptions that go into our projections for new transportation capacity," Nancy Olewiler wrote in Policy Options magazine. "That possibility is something for planners to think about before they take long-term decisions to pump billions of dollars into infrastructure spending, at the expense of investments in health or education, which we will need to improve our quality of life."
Still, TransLink executives push ahead, claiming $23 billion of investment should be paid for by current residents to serve the million new people who will move into the region over the next three decades.
Olewiler seems to think growth will slow; even if she's wrong, one wonders why the taxes generated from those new residents won't be enough to grow TransLink service.
After all, these new residents will be paying gas taxes, parking levies and bridge tolls amongst other current TransLink taxes.
TransLink's waste problems have corroded the trust of many taxpayers. The executives in charge would do well to follow their chair's lead, scale back their grandiose expansion plans, and instead work on rebuilding their credibility with the public.
TransLink must show it can be trusted with its current funding formula – "The best in Canada" – before it is given any more taxpayer money. •
