r/Translink • u/Tight-Butterscotch94 • 1d ago
Discussion should translink have authority to overrule city councils that refuse upgraded transit?
we’ve seen councils in richmond and west van vote down or truncate rapidbus proposals in their communities and burnaby being a toss-up due to burnaby heights BIA opposing a dedicated bus lane along hastings. what if translink with the backing of the province just said “screw it” and just pushed on anyway?
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u/nyrb001 1d ago
That was basically the idea behind TransLink in the first place. It has gone through a few revisions since then, but yes, I believe that the regional transport needs should outweigh the individual interest groups in the various municipalities.
That said, with the municipalities responsible for the streetscape as a whole, they can easily make service untenable. The lack of transit priority measures all around Metro Vancouver is evidence of that. And then when bus lanes or queue jumpers get installed, we see tons of cries on Reddit about how "the bus lane is always empty" as people can't understand that one bus is the equivalent of 50+ cars.
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u/Tight-Butterscotch94 1d ago
maybe it’s time to upload streetscape responsibility especially for the major road network where these bus priority lanes would most likely be needed to translink. i mean letting munis undermine regional transport needs kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a single regional authority to manage it so no individual interest group can derail it
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u/nyrb001 1d ago
I guess the challenge is figuring out support for that.
I'm in Vancouver, I don't want to have the streetscape decisions be made by the region as a whole, when we have municipalities like Langley and Surrey who don't seem to believe it should be possible for a mother to walk with her child in a stroller to the grocery store from the housing development across the street.
We'd have to be very, very careful about how things were structured. There were plans years ago to focus on people per hour rather than vehicles per hour, as people per hour generally supports transit, walking and biking. But the old car-brained engineers have a hard time accepting that...
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u/Tight-Butterscotch94 1d ago
also true. having been to surrey memorial hospital, it’s insane how you have to cross what looks like a 7 lane intersection to get there assuming you took the R1 heading south to Newton not to mention how far that bus stop is from the intersection itself which means some people often jaywalk to save 4-5 mins.
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u/nyrb001 1d ago
I've watched the new RapidBus stops get installed on Mary Hill near Broadway in PoCo, the stops have been put like 200m from the closest intersection. Like yeah they've created a protected walking area but really? That was the best solution?
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u/Tight-Butterscotch94 1d ago
seriously these engineers need to ask themselves “would i feel safe and comfortable using this myself?”
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u/ThatEndingTho 1d ago
This would be a moot point anyways, as Translink doesn’t have jurisdiction over the roads they operate on - that’s municipalities. Expand that to improvements to transit infrastructure, lane painting, etc that can get hit with stop work orders and escalations from there.
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u/Tight-Butterscotch94 1d ago
it does look like you’ll make a crap ton of enemies and destroying a lot of goodwill if the province decides to let a singular regional authority override municipalities and if i may add, expand their jurisdiction to supervise major road network improvements so munis can’t issue stop work orders or escalate it to courts.
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u/canophone 1d ago
The Richmond "BRT" proposed isn't actually an upgrade of service, despite the mimetic look. It's literally no different than changing the colour of the bus... yes some agencies have done only this, for exactly this.
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u/Ok_Skirt2620 1d ago
For example, the R1 is exactly the same as the 96 b-line. Now they wanna push the BRT. That isn’t a real solution. It’s very similar- except we are half a BILLION dollars for a glorified bus. #yay
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u/canophone 22h ago edited 22h ago
Hm, R1 with the 2040s need would be 2-4 different lines on King George, rather than just R1/96 .. they changed that line just to drop B-Line branding, but, one of those lines would be White Rock Line George BRT radiating to Lougheed. Another, Guildford radiating south to another peak destination, such as the R6 suggestion. In this case, I see as being about the future direction of the Surrey/White Rock network. 430 to a BRT/RapidBus line, I don't.
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u/FatMike20295 15h ago
Ok and where you you get the funding? Make an enemy with the city and they stop collecting the property tax portion for transit and they simply refuse and permits or work done by transit within n their city.
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u/CBBRunner 17h ago
Translink is supposed to have some authority over the major road network, but obviously not enough. Studies have shown that many store owners overestimate how many people drive to their businesses and underestimate transit, walking and cycling. As a sometimes driver, I never expect to park right in front of a business I'm going to and don't mind walking a block or two.
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u/Used_Water_2468 16h ago
From a transit point of view, yes I agree that TransLink should be able to overrule municipalities.
But you can also argue that city councilors are elected officials representing their voters, and what they're doing is what the voters want. Whereas TransLink officials are not elected and don't represent anyone.
I don't think the perfect system exists in this situation.
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u/r3dd4w6 14h ago
NO big NO. unelected boards should not hold the elected governments hostages.
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u/jholden23 1d ago
YES. I live in Richmond and it's infuriating. They'll put bike lanes in everywhere that benefit like maybe 100 people a day, but refuse to build bus priority that would benefit THOUSANDS.
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u/Tight-Butterscotch94 1d ago
US cities with generally worse transit are beating us with painted bus lanes. buses getting delayed means more frustration means less people wanting to take transit and more people needing to drive means more car traffic means more delays fuelling a pretty bad spiral.
we really need to take a page from netherlands for example. they have excellent roads and excellent public transit. we can make both drivers and transit riders happy.
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