A feature policy of Proudly Surrey is the creation of a South Fraser transportation authority, a “CisLink”, if you will, to the Vancouver-centred TransLink (the Latin root “trans” means “across” whereas “cis” means “adjacent to”). The party has announced a series of “CisLink” policy goals and ideas since the beginning of the campaign. This synopsis puts all of these ambitious proposals in one place.
Legal Basis: In 1994, when TransLink was created, it was by a multilateral consensual agreement among the affected municipalities, the Greater Vancouver Regional District (now Metro Vancouver Regional District) and the BC government. This was symbolized in a signing ceremony between GVRD Chair, George Puil and the BC premier Mike Harcourt. While the authority was reorganized non-consensually by the BC Liberal government of Gordon Campbell, “Proudly Surrey has received a legal opinion that the absence of consent made the reorganization illicit and that this, alone, constitutes actionable grounds to leave TransLink,” explained Pauline Greaves, Proudly Surrey’s mayoral candidate.
Practical Basis: In recent years, the Greater Montreal area has split its transportation authority in two, creating a second authority for the less populous, more rapidly growing, more suburban Island of Laval, the Montreal equivalent of the South Fraser Region. This has turned out to be good public policy in Quebec and there is no reason that it would not produce equally good outcomes in BC. In eastern and central North America, it is common for multiple governments and their agencies to co-administer a system with a single fare structure and shared infrastructure assets. The Greater Boston area, for instance, features a system that does not just serve multiple counties and municipalities but three states, with both buses and rail lines crossing state lines administered not through a single authority but through cost-sharing agreements.
Democratic Control: TransLink is an agency whose decisions are removed from democratic control. Surrey’s mayor is but one vote on a “Mayor’s Council,” which functions mostly as an advisory body to a board of directors, who are often hired from outside of BC and remunerated far in excess of the salary any elected BC politician receives and whose business plan is no longer effective for all its members.
“TransLink has become a technocracy, a government by experts, it is not a democracy. While expertise has its place in transportation planning, routing bus routes, truck routes and the like must be based on local knowledge and local concerns. TransLink has plenty of experts to execute its individual decisions, but we need an authority in which regular people, ordinary transit users have more direct control,” stated Greaves.
“CisLink” would be governed by Councillors selected from among their peers on city council(s) and would be required to hold regular meetings. In addition, the governing council of “CisLink” would include an additional member drawn randomly each year from monthly bus pass purchasers.
Fair Fares: “The Compass Fare system is so expensive and inefficient that it currently absorbs the entirety of fares paid in the system. The cost of purchasing and running the Compass system has been so high that all fares pay for is the purchase and maintenance of the fare gate system. The predictions that it would reduce fare evasion and thereby cause an increase in revenue was premised on the erroneous notion that something other than poverty causes most fare evasion. An expensive and ineffective system was installed and yet, people in extreme poverty did not become any richer as a consequence and so no revenue increase took place. Instead, those in extreme poverty became poorer, paying a single fare on the bus that could not be converted into a rapid transit fare,” Greaves concluded.
“CisLink would remove the new fare boxes, and switch to the cutting-edge optical technology used in the integrated subway-LRT-bus system in which paper transfers are scanned by the eyes of transit vehicle operators and fare collectors,” stated Stuart Parker, Proudly Surrey’s point person on the “CisLink” project.
Serving Transit-Dependent Users: TransLink has the objective of increasing its ridership statistics, i.e. use of the transit system by new individuals who have not used the system before and focuses its service increases not on areas where there is the highest demand but where ridership will be most responsive to investment. “For this reason, areas where there are concentrations of transit-dependent users, i.e. people who will ride the bus/train no matter how bad or inconvenient service is have received little and, in some cases, negative transit investment. This is unacceptable,” stated Parker, a transit-dependent resident of North Surrey.
“The first priority of any transit system must be to ensure that those who have no other way of getting around are not housebound for extended periods, cut off from crucial services like childcare, medical care or senior’s services. “CisLink” will invest first in providing necessary service for those whose age, youth, disability or poverty cuts off from other transportation options,” Parker added.
Responsive Truck Routing: Currently, truck routes are planned, designated and maintained by TransLink based on regional priorities. “In a rapidly changing city like Surrey, where new industrial land goes into production with some frequency and areas of industrial use become residential, it is necessary to have a more flexible truck route designation system both for logistics firms and the changing needs of neighbourhoods,” stated Parshotam Goel, Proudly Surrey’s point person on development.
“CisLink” would decentralize truck route control to local city councils to handle along with other types of arterial route designation.
“Many people think that ordinary voters and their elected representatives are not smart enough to care about public transportation and, when given the opportunity, will form ill-informed plans about public transportation. Some opinion leaders and politicians in Vancouver point to the belief of some Surrey residents, that tearing up a $500 million contract with Justin Trudeau will get them a $4 billion SkyTrain. But the reason that the transit debate in Surrey has become toxic the past decade is because the power of local voters and their representatives has been usurped by an unaccountable group of technocrats who have perpetrated massive boondoggles like the Compass system and have tried to hide their failures from the public. Know-nothing populism doesn’t come from nowhere; it is fostered by systems in which people are looked down upon and made to feel powerless. Surrey residents will engage with their transit system democratically, rationally and cooperatively, given the chance” Greaves believes.
(Release from Proudly Surrey)