Category: TransLink

Referendum Myths: “It’ll cost you $258 a year”

The biggest myth being perpetuated by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is that it will cost every Metro Vancouver household $258 every year in new taxes. That is completely incorrect, and here’s why.

First, the CTF’s math. The 0.5% Metro Vancouver Congestion Improvement Tax (which I’ll shorten to CIT from now on) will generate roughly $250 million per year to pay for the myriad improvements in Metro Vancouver’s transportation system. In 2011, the Vancouver census metropolitan area (which is pretty much the same thing as Metro Vancouver) had 891,336 private dwellings occupied by usual residents. That number increased by 9.1% between 2006 and 2011, so assuming a steady increase, that turns out to be a 1.76% yearly increase. That means that in 2015 there are roughly 955,762 households in Vancouver. Divide the $250,000,000 equally amongst all of those households and you get $261.57 per year, which is pretty close to the CTF’s $258 per year.

Now here’s why that number is wrong. The CTF is making the assumption that only households will be paying the CIT. That is wrong. Plain and simple, the CTF’s base assumption is wrong.

Visitors to Metro Vancouver will also pay the CIT. In 2014 Metro Vancouver had nearly nine million overnight visits, and tourism continues to increase (and will get better if the Canadian dollar remains weak against the US dollar). In BC, hotel stays are taxed and one can reasonably assume that the CIT will apply here as well. Total spending by overnight visitors was $4.4 billion in 2006, and if you assume that 75% of this is taxable (food isn’t, but tourists spend roughly 25% of their money on food (at least, domestic tourists in the UK do)), that works out to $16.5 million. Take that number, scale it up by 5.5% per year between 2006 and 2014 and you get about $25.3 million per year.

Okay, so 10% of the $250 million will be paid for by tourists.

What about businesses? They’re going to pay the CIT as well! I don’t have any good numbers, but the Mayors’ Council pegs this at 45%. That sounds reasonable to me, but if someone wants to make the case that this number should be substantially larger or smaller, there’s a comment form at the bottom of this post.

Put those numbers together and you end up with households paying roughly 45% of the $250 million each year, or $112.5 million per year, or $117.70 per household per year.

But! The CTF also says, of the $250 million, “…that’s a tax increase – visible and hidden – of $258 per household.” They try to sneak in this “hidden” cost, assuming that businesses will directly pass on any taxes they pay to people purchasing their products. Here’s a simple example showing that is wrong:

There is currently a gas tax of 17 cents per litre charged in Metro Vancouver. Metro Vancouver does not include the city of Abbotsford but does include Langley, which borders Abbotsford. If this gas tax is directly passed on to the consumer, one would expect that a gas station in Langley would charge 17 cents more per litre than a gas station in Abbotsford. Is that the case?

No. That image is gas prices from January 27, 2015. To the west of the red line is Langley, to the east is Abbotsford. The three gas stations in Langley average to 100.6 cents per litre, and the five in Abbotsford average to 89.9 cents per litre, a difference of 10.7 cents per litre. Either gas stations in Langley are eating six cents per litre or gas stations in Abbotsford are charging an extra six cents per litre. I suspect reality is somewhere between the two.

There are also a lot of businesses in Metro Vancouver that either don’t directly charge consumers (mining companies are a good example) or are national (such as banks) or multi-national (such as shipping companies and large software companies). How does a mining company pass on the 0.5% CIT to Metro Vancouver households? How does Microsoft pass on the 0.5% CIT to Metro Vancouver households? They don’t.

How much will Metro Vancouver households pay in CIT? Probably around $100-120 per year. That’s a far cry from the $258 per year that the CTF says they’ll pay. Again, they’re only interested in fear-mongering instead of presenting facts.

And that they use this as a major part of their campaign? Relying on weak and incorrect math to scare Metro Vancouver residents?

That’s pretty weak.

Referendum Myths: “TransLink is Wasteful”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released its “No TransLink Tax” platform today, and their second major point is “TranLink is an extremely wasteful organization”. As proof, they offer these six “high waste” examples:

TransLink doesn’t just have one board of directors, it has six – at a cost of $751,589 in annual salary. And after TransLink’s board chair promised executive pay would be frozen “at 2012 levels,” every single TransLink executive got paid more money in 2013.

TransLink spends at least $1.12 million on an empty building. The SkyTrain union head calls the $60,000/month lease payment “outright waste” and a “poor financial decision.”

Despite crying poor, TransLink kicked in more than $30,000 to put a 7-foot statue of a poodle on top of a 25-foot pole. The Main Street Poodle is nowhere near any major transit station, nor is the poodle symbolic of the neighbourhood.

TransLink took months to fix a glitch that saw its ticket vending machines treat new $5 bills like they were $20s. People would buy tickets and get more money back than they put in.

TransLink spent $523,000 on 13 TV screens at various SkyTrain stations. A year later, a CTF inspection showed only 4 of 13 were working. TransLink refuted that claim, saying 6 of the 13 $40,000+ TVs worked – still less than half.

TransLink spent $30,000 studying a gondola up Burnaby Mountain that neither neighbours nor City Hall supported. As Mayor Derek Corrigan said: “[If TransLink is so broke,] why are they going into additional expenses, like the gondola? It’s never been a priority.”

Let’s take a look at those one-by-one and cut some fat off of TransLink’s budget.

TransLink doesn’t just have one board of directors, it has six – at a cost of $751,589 in annual salary. And after TransLink’s board chair promised executive pay would be frozen “at 2012 levels,” every single TransLink executive got paid more money in 2013.

To be properly pedantic, TransLink only has one board of directors. However, it oversees a number of companies that actually operate buses and trains and supply policing services: Coast Mountain Bus Company, British Columbia Rapid Transit Company Ltd, West Coast Express, and Transit Police. I can only find boards for TransLink, CMBC, BCRTC, and the Transit Police, though. Apparently the CTF counts the Mayor’s Council as a board, and magically the West Coast Express has one too. Keep in mind that the Mayor’s Council is made up of, well, mayors, and mayors were elected by the people, and the CTF keeps going on about how TransLink isn’t accountable to anybody because nobody overseeing them was elected, except for this Mayor’s Council, which I guess the CTF ignores when it comes to matters of accountability but falls over themselves to include when it comes to matters of waste, but nobody ever accused the CTF of being consistent.

Anyhow, let’s take the CTF at their word. Six boards. Total cost of $751,589. Let’s cut that down to one board to oversee everything. Assuming equal distribution of funds, we’ve just saved TransLink $626,324.17.

And yes, every single TransLink executive got paid more money in 2013 than they did in 2012. You can see it in the 2013 Financial Information Act Filing and Remuneration Report. In 2013 the seven executives had a total compensation of $2,517,791, whereas in 2012 their total compensation was $2,333,799. Let’s claw back all of that increase, and we’ve just saved TransLink $183,992.

TransLink spends at least $1.12 million on an empty building. The SkyTrain union head calls the $60,000/month lease payment “outright waste” and a “poor financial decision.”

Well shit, let’s dump that! Bam, just saved $720,000 a year. We’re really finding lots of waste here!

Of course, you can’t just break leases like that without incurring penalties. But of course, that’s the real world, and the CTF would like for you to forget about that.

Despite crying poor, TransLink kicked in more than $30,000 to put a 7-foot statue of a poodle on top of a 25-foot pole. The Main Street Poodle is nowhere near any major transit station, nor is the poodle symbolic of the neighbourhood.

Let’s put that poodle to sleep and put that $30,000 in our pocket.

TransLink took months to fix a glitch that saw its ticket vending machines treat new $5 bills like they were $20s. People would buy tickets and get more money back than they put in.

Okay, this is a serious problem. Unfortunately I cannot find any hard numbers (or even soft numbers) about how much was lost here. According to this story it happened four times across the system, and in each case a SkyTrain attendant put the machine out-of-order until it could be fixed. That’s $70 wasted.

TransLink spent $523,000 on 13 TV screens at various SkyTrain stations. A year later, a CTF inspection showed only 4 of 13 were working. TransLink refuted that claim, saying 6 of the 13 $40,000+ TVs worked – still less than half.

Okay, so seven broke. That’s $281,615 wasted.

TransLink spent $30,000 studying a gondola up Burnaby Mountain that neither neighbours nor City Hall supported. As Mayor Derek Corrigan said: “[If TransLink is so broke,] why are they going into additional expenses, like the gondola? It’s never been a priority.”

Mayor Corrigan is right: TransLink shouldn’t do studies on opening up new transit routes, especially to a location that gets snowed in nearly every year, making it impossible for buses to get to. Let’s just say that’s $30,000 wasted.

Well, that’s an awful lot of waste! By my calculations that’s a total of $1,872,001 wasted. Don’t forget that a big chunk of that ($720,000) would come with penalties that TransLink would have to pay. But still, nearly $1.9 million dollars of waste!

But let’s put that into context. TransLink’s expenditures in 2013 were $1.406 billion (which was actually down from $1.430 billion, thanks to identifying cost inefficiencies). $1.872 million out of $1.430 billion is 0.13%. That’s miniscule, and it’s nearly thirteen times smaller than efficiency savings that TransLink already found.

So TransLink is already identifying areas where it can be more efficient. It’s saved $26 million from 2012 to 2013. And the Canadian Taxpayers Foundation is saying TransLink is incredibly wasteful, and their “big waste” items only come to $1.9 million? Really?

Ever heard of the phrase “trying to squeeze blood from a stone”? Or how about “scraping the bottom of the barrel”? Because that’s what the CTF is trying to do. And they’re throwing these numbers out without any context to scare people.

Look at the facts. The facts say that TransLink is already identifying inefficiencies, and there’s not much left to find. Even if all of the identified cruft and waste is trimmed (and that’s not realistic), that only gains you 0.13%, which is miniscule. Put it this way: if you make $25/hr, and you suddenly get a 0.13% raise, do you know how much you make? $25.03. An extra quarter a day.

Does that sound like an “extremely wasteful organization”?

It doesn’t to me. What it sounds like is the CTF is blowing scare tactics all around and hoping that people don’t stop to think. It sounds like the CTF assumes people are stupid and will see EXTREMELY WASTEFUL ORGANIZATION without any context, and then just parrot the CTF’s line.

The CTF thinks you’re stupid and will just eat this up. Show them that you’re not. Show them that these context-free factoids aren’t going to fool you. Show them that we don’t have to listen to their rhetoric.

Regarding Translink’s ‘Fare Not Paid’ Button

On January 6, 2015, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation put out a press release stating

TransLink bus drivers pressed a special button in their coaches to record a “fare not paid” more than 2.76 million times in 2013…

2.76 million times! That’s a lot of button presses and a huge amount of fare evasion! Like Jordan Bateman, the CTF’s BC Director, said:

These bus drivers should be checked for carpal tunnel syndrome from having to repeatedly push that fare evasion button. TransLink executives have turned a blind eye to millions of fare cheats, causing unnecessary financial grief for honest riders and taxpayers.

Indeed! TransLink executives really don’t give a shit about fare cheats. They have no fucks to give about fare cheats. They put up giant signs saying “FARE CHEATS WELCOME HERE” on every bus.

Well, no, they didn’t. That’s hyperbolic. And so are the statements from Jordan Bateman and the CTF.

With no context, 2.76 million presses of the “fare not paid” button sounds like a lot, and it is. But each one of those button presses isn’t someone refusing to pay their fare. If you read the actual document you’ll find this:

A “fare not paid” entry can represent one of a range of fare-related discrepancies. An issue can include: a partial payment of fare; overpayment of a fare into a bus fare box, which cannot dispense change; failure of a passenger to AddFare when travelling across zones; or fare evasion. It is not the intent of this tool to document revenue loss.

So those 2.76 million button presses were not 2.76 million instances of fare evasion. Some of them were because someone paid, but not enough. Some of them were because someone paid too much!

Strangely, the CTF press release makes no mention of that, instead labelling every one of these button presses as caused by “fare cheats” and “freeloaders”.

With no context, 2.76 million presses of the “fare not paid” button sounds like a lot, and it is. But how many people boarded buses in 2013? If it’s five million, then TransLink’s got a huge problem. If it’s 50 million, then TransLink still has a problem with a potential “fare loss” of about 5.5%.

TransLink didn’t have 5 million bus boardings in 2013. It didn’t have 50 million. It didn’t even have 100 million. In 2013, TransLink had 228 million bus boardings (from Page 9 of their 2013 Bus Service Performance Review). Is 2.76 million out of 228 million still a huge problem? It’s 1.2% of bus riders. One point two percent.

That’s what happens when you take raw numbers out of context. You can take those numbers and have them fit your narrative. In Jordan Bateman’s narrative, TransLink is horribly wasteful and not deserving of any tax dollars. Finding “fare cheats” and “freeloaders” is easy to do when you just yell TWO POINT SEVEN SIX MILLION FARES NOT PAID without giving any context whatsoever. Unfortunately, reality tends to illuminate these context-free statements, showing that Jordan Bateman and the CTF are being intellectually dishonest on this issue.

The Boondoggle of Eighth Street

I have a lot of issues with the bus and pedestrian flow on the streets and sidewalks around the New Westminster Skytrain Station. Just so we’re all on the same page, here’s a map:

Because Google Maps is helpful, it didn’t label Eighth Street. It’s the big one that runs between the Old Spaghetti Factory and Ki Sushi.

First issue I have: Driving down Eighth towards Columbia, between Royal Avenue (off the top of the map) and Carnarvon Street, Eighth is two lanes in either direction. After Carnarvon, it’s one lane in each direction. One of the problems is that this isn’t very well marked before Carnarvon. There’s one sign and it’s off on the sidewalk, behind a wide angled-parking section, and it’s easily missed. Eighth, heading downhill, is wide enough for two lanes, and this throws people off.

There’s also a forced-left turn with a central island that’s used for getting into the underground parking at the Anvil Centre. I’ve seen drivers get stuck in this left-turn lane when they didn’t want to, so they cut into the oncoming lane and continue down Eighth.

Both of these confuse drivers in the mid-block of Eighth between Carnarvon and Columbia, and confused drivers are often inattentive while they figure out where they’re supposed to be going. Couple that with…

…my second issue: no crosswalk across Eighth between Columbia and Carnarvon. There used to be one, and people still jaywalk across there. Right under the Skytrain is where one of the station exits is, and if you’re going across the street (say, to Ki Sishi) then you’re likely going to jaywalk. Jaywalking pedestrians, combined with inattentive drivers, leads to potential disaster. Yes, there are crosswalks at Carnarvon and Columbia, but people are lazy.

From Patrick Johnstone’s post back in 2011 about the Multi-Use Civic Facility (now the Anvil Centre):

Before that crosswalk was installed, people walking out of the Skytrain wanting to cross 8th were asked to walk up or down the street a half block, in the rain, to the corner of Columbia or Carnarvon. The mid-block crossing not only provided a more direct crossing, it offered the rain shelter of the Skytrain line. Naturally, people jaywalked, creating a safety hazard for cars and busses before the crosswalk was installed.

…

With new retail and restaurant activities on the east side of 8th, the pedestrian traffic will only increase. Does the City think the people coming out of the Skytrain will now walk to the corner of Columbia (in the rain), wait for a light (in the rain) then cross, to get to he MUCF from the Skytrain, or from Plaza 88? Of course they will stay under the cover of the Skytrain, and they will Jaywalk, right in front of cars pulling into or out of the MUCF. Conflict will ensue. Someone may get killed.

To fix these two combined issues, I would suggest making the right-hand lane on Eighth before Carnarvon a right-turn-only turn lane with large, visible markings on the roadway, along with overhead signage (specifically R-82R in the Manual of Standard Traffic Signs & Pavement Markings). I would also suggest reinstating the crosswalk across Eighth, but adding pedestrian-controlled flashing warning lights, similar to those outside the library on Sixth Avenue.

My third issue is the bus stops.

Along Eighth there are two, one for the C3 and one for the C4. Both of them turn left off Eighth up Columbia. Here’s a little Google Earth map with some really crappy lines:

Red lines are curbs. The pink lines mark out the loading zone driveway that services the Shops at New West. The red polygon in the middle of Eighth marks out the forced left turn to get into the underground parking at the Anvil Centre. The green line is where passengers line up to catch the C3.

Do you see how the C3 passenger line bleeds into the loading zone driveway? That happens every single day in the evening rush hour, when more than 15 people are waiting for the bus.

It is horrible HORRIBLE design to have the passenger line crossing a driveway. I don’t know who thought this might be a good idea, but they need to be fired. This stop has been situated like this for at least a year with no change in sight. This can be fixed by swapping the C3 stop with the C9 stop, which is located underneath the Skytrain station. Ridership on the C9 is lower than the C3, so the C9 lines don’t get as long and won’t spill into the driveway.

The C3 and the C4 both have to turn left off Eighth onto Columbia. Do you see where the C4 stop is? It’s metres from the intersection. The bus has to cut clear across the right-hand turn lane to wedge itself into the left-hand turn lane. The C3 is marginally better, given it is further from the intersection.

This is incredibly stupid design and is easily fixed by swapping the stops for the C4 and the C8. The C8 turns right off Eighth onto Columbia, so it doesn’t have to cut across the right-hand turn lane to continue on its route. The C4 can turn right off Carnarvon onto Eighth, then easily get into the left-turn lane to continue on its route up Columbia.

I have other issues with Eighth (turn the taxi bay in front of the Old Spaghetti Factory into a passenger drop-off zone, move the taxi bay up around the corner to Carnarvon) but those are the major ones.

So. Four changes to make Eighth Street between Carnarvon Street and Columbia Avenue a little better for pedestrians, traffic, and transit:

  1. Convert right-hand lane on Eighth, downhill before Carnarvon, to right-turn-only.
  2. Reinstate crosswalk across Eighth, adding pedestrian-controlled warning lights.
  3. Swap the C3 and C9 bus stops.
  4. Swap the C4 and C8 bus stops.

Get it done, New Westminster.

Translink vs. Translink

Translink, May 23 2012:

With fare gates coming into operation at SkyTrain and Canada Line stations next year, TransLink has yet to smooth out potential wrinkles in the new system.

One involves a particular benefit enjoyed by riders with prepaid passes. On Sundays and holidays, two adults and four children aged 13 and under can travel on a single TransLink adult monthly fare card or West Coast Express 28-day pass, or an annual employer transit pass.

“All we can tell you right now is that the offering will still be there,” spokesperson Ken Hardie told the Straight by phone. “How it will work—at this point, we don’t have that detail for you.”

Translink, July 30 2013:

After a review of discounts and programs in its tariff, TransLink will make changes that will affect customers. As part of the changes, several programs will be discontinued.

As approved by the TransLink Board, the changes to the tariff include the discontinuation of:

Free travel for family members of monthly pass holders on Sundays and holidays effective January 1, 2014.

Huh.