The pilgrimage by Metro Vancouver mayors heading to Victoria to kiss Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon’s ring is a sign of things to come. Now that TransLink is on the verge of disintegration, with one more meeting left before the new provincial legislation is put in place, politicians are reverting to form. That is to say, in a manner reminiscent before 1999 when the NDP turned responsibility for transit over to the GVRD, mayors are directly lobbying Victoria for transit favours.

Once TransLink was set up, negotiations with the province and Ottawa were usually handled by the TransLink chair and included consultations with the mayors of affected municipalities. I gather that’s how the Canada Line project advanced under the chair of TransLink.

But the new transit board will have no elected officials. It will have instead merely a council of mayors who approve the most general of plans for the transit authority. As a number of soon-to-be-former TransLink board members have grumbled, local politicians will inevitably lose control.

In his monthly newsletter, TransLink board member and Vancouver NPA Coun. Peter Ladner said of the new structure: “It will add two extra layers of bureaucracy, provide less accountability and transparency, sever the formal relationship with Metro Vancouver, and lead to higher administration costs.”

From TransLink vice-chair Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt’s point of view, power is “migrating back across to Victoria.”

There are two recent Falcon pronouncements that Hunt puts forward to support his theory of what is about to befall us. Last summer, a propos of nothing in particular, Falcon announced that it would be a good idea to have a SkyTrain line running all the way to Surrey. The idea had never been discussed with regional politicians, and it was not part of TransLink’s plans. But it was obvious to the board that with Falcon at the wheel, all its planning was heading for the ditch.

Falcon’s second fiat was delivered a few weeks ago when the minister returned from Europe and declared all SkyTrain stations would have gates and turnstiles. There was much gnashing of teeth at the regional transportation board room table while staff and elected officials tried to figure out just who would pick up the multi-million dollar bill for this bright idea. There were no immediate answers.

What was not in doubt was who was clearly in charge. Hence the pilgrimage of mayors, from Langley District, Abbotsford, Surrey and Vancouver, to visit our pope of public transit. Instead of the planning and horse trading that has gone on around the regional table for many years, it is every mayor on their own.

This new world order, according to Hunt, is aggravated by Mayor Sam Sullivan. “If you are going to criticize Sam for anything, it’s his timing,” he says, regarding Sullivan’s lobbying of Falcon. No one would be more annoyed by this than Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts. On a per capita basis her municipality gets one quarter the transit services of Vancouver.

Sullivan has never been seen as a team player regionally, provincially or nationally. His aggressive noises (and so far they have only been noises) about the extension to the Millennium Line down Broadway have made regional mayors all the more nervous about their transit needs being funded.

They thought there was a deal in place: first finish the Evergreen Line to the northeast sector and then work on the Broadway line in Vancouver as well as Surrey’s plans for better transit. That deal remains unchanged, at least on paper. But nobody can figure out just what Sullivan is trying to prove and how Falcon may respond.

What is going on, says Hunt, is “not good for transportation in the Lower Mainland.” And he isn’t the only guy who holds that view. [The Vancouver Courier]

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