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I don’t want to jump the gun before any real details are released. Besides, as Keith Baldrey says in his report below, there hasn’t been any leaks so to speak - he’s more… connecting the dots. Have more tomorrow on this.

UPDATE: The announcement is at 10:30 AM. Check back here shortly after for full details and analysis.

Rafe Mair wrote an editorial for The Tyee, detailing the process by which TransLink has reverted back to provincial control. He also mentions several other projects whereby the Campbell government has superseded local interests. Interesting read.

This new TransLink board, all Campbell approved, without an elected person on it, will have the power to raise property taxes, buy and sell property, change property taxation classifications and run its own police force.

Here they are:

• Dale Parker, a businessman who’s business financially supports the Campbell crowd;
• Nancy Olewiler, an economist who serves as a Liberal appointee on BC Hydro’s board of directors;
• David Unrah, lawyer and businessman who serves on many boards of directors and, get this, is the corporate director of Canada Line Rapid Transit which is overseeing the construction of the RAV — oops! — Canada Line (A little conflict of interest here?);
• Jamie Bruce, an investment banker;
• Sarah Goodman, PR spokesperson for Weyerhouse;
• Robert Tribe, long time Executive Director of SNCF Lavalin, which makes buses and transit stuff (surely not another conflict of interest!);
• Cindy Chan Piper who has a consulting firm, is a member of Vancouver’s right wing Non-Partisan Association and is a vocal supporter of Sam Sullivan (Gosh! Not another conflict of interest!); and
• Skip Triplett, who has been an executive with BC Tel (now Telus), Xerox of Canada and the Steel Company of Canada.

There you have it folks. Nine members of the business community all approved in advance by Premier Campbell to represent the needs of two million Vancouverites…

… And what was the fundamental issue that triggered the American Revolution? Taxation without representation.

Well folks, George III is alive and well. He runs his fiefdom in a great big office in the parliament buildings in Victoria.

You may have noticed a few trends throughout my many transportation related posts: I’m a transit man thru and thru, I spend a crazy amount of time coming up with solutions that will never be implemented, and I have a disdain for Kevin Falcon. One you may not have picked up on though is my lack on stance on the Gateway Project. It’s because, unlike some organizations, I see both sides of the story, and I know the world is just not as black and white as some would like as to see it. Polarization and arguments don’t help solve the problem.

Growth, at least at this point in time, is nearly inevitable. Whether that is in population, the service sector, or goods movement. We are living in good times and should be glad this is not the recession of the 80’s. That said, we should capitalize on our healthy economy to make the investments today to ensure this wealth continues for years to come.

Based on the projections, Vancouver is going to grow and become a national Gateway to the Pacific. And, heck, why should we turn down all the new tax sources? Why send the ships down to Seattle or L.A. when we’re the best suited for the job? Let’s embrace this opportunity.

And so, the federal, and provincial, governments, along with business organizations have developed what amounts to a Gateway strategy - implementing strategic upgrading of important transportation corridors to enable this expansion to occur. I’m glad governments are so gung ho to invest in the Lower Mainland.

However, we must take into consideration that there are more stakeholders in the region than just truckers and businessmen from China. There are 2.1 million residents, expected to grow past 3 million by 2030. Our region is one of the best places on Earth to live in, and we don’t want to sacrifice this lifestyle, but improve it for the future.

Does this strategy of a livable, and sustainable, lifestyle conflict with the concept of becoming a national Gateway? Perhaps, at least conceptually, but I think if any place is best suited to find creative solutions to satisfy all parties, then it’s Metro Vancouver. We’ve got an incredible history behind us of using communication and cooperation to move our region forward, and now’s not the time to stop it.

Unfortunately, I feel that a lot of this will fall on deaf ears. I hate to be so critical of another human being, but based on the actions of Mr. Falcon, I have seen nothing that tells me he is willing to make some important changes to the Gateway Program.

In my personal view, these should include:

• Regional bylaws to ensure there is a green buffer zone between all strategic Gateway routes and areas (ports, truck stops, etc.) *
• Implementation of a toll system whereby funds are returned to public coffers, and once the bridge is paid off, funds go directly to TransLink (i.e. The Golden Ears Bridge)
• Work with TransLink to incorporate any tolling system into a region wide travel demand management system, ensuring equity to residents around the region *
• Ensuring that, based on the new Regional Growth Strategy currently in development by Metro Vancouver, that said board has the powers it requests - this may include overseeing and tracking development goals for all municipalities, reserving key transportation corridors for future use, preserving and enhancing the Green Zone, development of an Industrial Land Reserve, etc.
• Prohibiting parking on any Gateway route *
• Participating in the development of guidelines and goals for efficient road movement. Headed by TransLink with all stakeholders as part of a goods movement strategy. *
• Discouraging the single occupancy vehicle by promising extensive funding for more transit expansion, in partnership with TransLink’s regional plans, and by implementing a proposed provincial wide carbon tax *
• Changing from HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes to HOT (high occupancy tolled) lanes. This new definition puts real time variable tolls on the lanes, allowing single occupancy vehicles to purchase access onto the lane, based on the current number of vehicles on the lane. This number of vehicles/hour for optimal lane efficiency would be defined in the proposed studies above. The HOT definition would also be expanded so that carpools, transit vehicles, motorcycles, hybrid vehicles, and smaller than normal vehicles (i.e. smart cars) could drive in the lane for free.
• Plan for the future designation of a second lane of Hwy 1 to become either HOT, or for goods movement only.
• Limiting SOV access to the North and South Fraser Perimeter Roads. This could be anything from defining them as goods movement vehicles only, or installing them as HOT laned routes. As a HOT route, SOV users could buy their way on if necessary, while restricting a huge increase of SOVs that would congest the routes.
• Ensuring the North and South Fraser Perimeter Roads are built in way so as not to prevent public access to the Fraser River waterfront, and without any major disruption of the environment surrounding the routes.
• Ensuring that all new facilities in the Gateway Program provide safe and secure cycling routes. Planning of said routes should include intense dialogue with the stakeholders, including the very proactive and vocal cycling groups in existence.
• Pursue Public-Private Partnerships. However, they must not be detrimental in any way to the public land, public amenities, and the public’s interest. Furthermore, once the contracts are up, the P3 facilities must return into the full control of local and provincial authorities.
• Work with stakeholders to shift goods movement travel to afterhours when the least amount of people are travelling.
• Either update the Gateway Program to be an encompassing transportation plan for the whole Lower Mainland (means including large transit, walking, and cycling components), in coordination with regional plans, or develop a parallel plan with regional authorities in which promises are made to provide substantial provincial funding for transit, walking, and cycling improvements.

It may shock you, but a number of these proposals are also supported by the Gateway Council, the group which has been pushing for this whole Gateway strategic infrastructure upgrade for over a decade. All the suggestions with a star behind them are supported by the Gateway Council.

This approach of mine is all about the devil in the details. It’s understanding and approving the concept, but tweaking the plan and policies that implement to ensure a better overall life for the public.

I think this notion is something the NDP really has to work on, so that they don’t alienate potential supporters. They’ve done it to South of the Fraser residents by opposing Gateway, and to First Nations communities and their allies with the Tsawwassen Treaty. Sure, they may keep their backers in Vancouver (Gateway), or farmers and land-use planners (Tsawwassen), but they are just responding to big issues with simple answers. Which is just making things more polarized than actually bringing stakeholders together and working collaboratively to improve the situation.

This is a copy and pasted version of TransLink’s latest press release: 

Mayors’ Council meets – TransLink’s governance transition begins 

The Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation is meeting for the first time today, following the passage of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act yesterday in the legislature. In its first act, the Council, which is comprised of all 21 mayors in the Metro Vancouver region, has selected Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts as its first Chair.

TransLink will officially adopt the governance model prescribed in the Act on Jan. 1, 2008 when the new Board of Directors assumes its duties. But the Act constituted the Mayors’ Council effective today so that it can immediately perform some of its key functions including selecting the new TransLink Board and starting a process to recruit the Regional Transportation Commissioner.

Governance Transition

The new Act will change TransLink’s governance structure in a number of key areas:

Directors and terms: 

Currently, TransLink has 12 directors who are either mayors or who are municipal councilors serving as directors on the Metro Vancouver Board. These directors, some of whom represent more than one municipality, serve one-year terms and are selected by the Metro Vancouver Board.

The new, nine-member Board of Directors will be appointed by the Mayors’ Council on the basis of their qualifications to oversee the organization. Directors will serve three-year terms to provide greater continuity of governance.

Because the structure calls for terms to end for one-third of the directors each year, three of the directors on the first Board will be appointed for one year, three will be appointed for two years and the remaining three will be appointed for three years. Subsequent directors will be appointed for three-year terms.

Regional Oversight:

Under the current structure, the Metro Vancouver Board of Directors has the authority to ratify or reject TransLink’s strategic transportation and financial plans.

In the new structure, instead of having 12 elected municipal officials on the TransLink Board, all 21 mayors in the region will sit on the Mayors’ Council and will have the authority to ratify or reject transportation and related funding plans and increased on TransLink’s borrowing limits.

The new structure will also include a Regional Transportation Commissioner whose focus will be to monitor and advise TransLink and the Mayors’ Council on customer service and satisfaction processes, the appropriateness of any cash transit fare increases above inflation and any sale of major TransLink facilities or assets.

An Expanded Service Area:

To date, TransLink has focused its attention on the road and transit system in Metro Vancouver, formerly known as the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

The new Act allows TransLink to expand to communities in the Fraser Valley or Squamish-Lillooet regional districts that opt to join its service area.

A “Shared Agenda”:

In its current form, TransLink has planned and funded Metro Vancouver’s transit system, major arterial roads and programs that provide commuters with travel options, all in support of the Livable Region Strategic Plan.

The new structure requires TransLink’s long-term strategy and its rolling ten-year plan to support both Metro Vancouver’s growth management strategy as well as the provincial government’s vision for the region’s transportation network.

On the final hour of the final day of the fall legislature, Minister of Transportation Kevin Falcon pushed the bill through and, in a vote of division 36 to 28, Bill 43 became official law in BC. We will soon see the ramifications of this law.

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]

He is the ultimate underminer.

First, essentially *forcing* TransLink to revote (3 times!) till the Canada Line was accepted. Then, unhappy that the board even dared to disagree with construction of the then-named RAV Line, he went forward with a governance structure review, ensuring that he and his buddies would get control over regional transportation.

Then, going forward with the Port Mann twin, despite the numerous reasons against doing so, including that it is not supported under long range regional plans, will increase greenhouse gases, and is certainly not encouraging people to take transit. But hey, it’ll let Falcon drive his SUV over the bridge a bit faster for a couple of years, until it gets congested again…

He continues to push Bill 43, which will see the board move from a semi-democratic form, into nothing short of a private transportation corporation. As this Georgia Straight article sums up perfectly: “With the creation of this new TransLink board, they are giving a group of business appointees powers equal to a municipality: the power to increase property taxes, the power to reclassify business tax for the purpose of taxation, and they are giving them the power to land-bank.”

Last week, on the whim of visiting Europe and seeing turnstiles, he suddenly decided that they would do good in Vancouver. Don’t bother reading the multiple TransLink reports on safety or fare evasion that stated the cost/benefit ratio is not sufficient enough to support the investment (as The Province explains in this article). Or the fact that there is no clear cost estimate for installing turnstiles (anywhere from $10 to $100 million, depending on which media outlet you follow). Or the fact that the current board continues to fight Falcon on moving forward with his imposed plan. Or the fact that, if the “province” (aka: Falcon) really wants TransLink to install turnstiles, they could easily provide the capital from the huge $4.1 billion annual surplus. But no, anything to let his business buds make a little side cash (after all, a private corporation will happily pay to install and run these turnstiles for years, with “no cost” to the taxpayer!).

Now comes news that Falcon thinks the SkyTrain should be open later, and wants the board to “take a look” at doing so. First off, I highly doubt he even takes SkyTrain, so who is he to suddenly decry that SkyTrain should be open later, and have it simply happen with a snap of his fingers? This issue has been around for a long time (the fact that SkyTrain closes before the bars downtown, which actually would boost taxi companies’ revenues). I’m sure plenty of people have suggested this idea to TransLink. Just off the top of my head, I’m pretty darn sure even Mr. Mayor Sam Sullivan (!) said he thought SkyTrain should run later. So why is it that TransLink doesn’t listen to anyone until Falcon shows up? Now, they are even calling their own studies on fare evasion false, with Malcom Brodie agreeing with Falcon that there simply must be more than “6-7% of riders without tickets” and that the number “must be around 25%“. Since when did Falcon get a chain and whip, and turn the municipal mayors and councillors into his bitches?

What the hell is up with this clusterfuck of a Minister? You thought Campbell was bad (I’m talking to the Campbell haters here, of which I am actually not one) - Falcon is the one you should be watching out for. He is a draconian despot.

Even The Vancouver Sun senses something fishy with the way Falcon is running his Ministry: “Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said the new structure would restore public confidence through accountability and governance. But one has to wonder what the point of the exercise is, since Falcon now seems determined to continue to make decisions that should really be taken by the board.”

“But if instead Falcon insists on continuing to make all the important decisions, then the change to the structure of the TransLink board will be merely cosmetic.“

And so Mr. Falcon cried down from the heavens of Legislature, “Let there be turnstiles”. And there were turnstiles.

I really hate rants, but reading all the stories today about this, I can’t help but make sure some facts here are more clear.

TransLink has completed several studies over the years on the cost-benefit ratio of installing turnstiles on the SkyTrain system. It was found to be expensive - 1. Because the Expo Line was not designed for them, 2. Because there would need to be staff at each station in case the public needed assistance. The honour system that is currently in use allows for moderately easy fare evasion and a perception of less safe stations.

To rectify some of these issues, without installing turnstiles, TransLink hired more SkyTrain staff, and began the Transit Police (with guns!). Nowadays, there’s usually one TransLink employee at every second or third station- many times more.

But lo and behold, Kevin Falcon takes a trip to Europe, sees the lovely smart cards and turnstiles, and thinks, “hey, that’s cool, we should have that in my hometown”.

He comes back, says he wants the system in place, and off he goes to make it happen. The history behind turnstiles in Vancouver.. nope it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it makes no fiscal sense. What Falcon wants, Falcon gets.

Port Mann twin. Canada Line. TransLink overhaul. Turnstiles.

May 12, 2006- Falcon ruminates on the virtues of the undemocratic Chinese governance model. He states the Chinese “don’t have the labour or environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do community consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could build like that?”

Can a guy be more autocratic?

So, of course, being the BC Liberal that Falcon is, he states that the project will be a Public-Private-Partnership. A private corporation will pay the $100 million plus to retrofit all the SkyTrain stations with turnstiles, and in return they will get a share of revenue.

Now, we are entering very creepy territory here. What I’m keenly afraid of is the aftereffect of these P3s 10 years from now. The Canada Line is very much a private transit line, simply being licenced as a service under very thin contract boundaries to TransLink. If the public wants more trains, and it doesn’t make fiscal sense, inTransitBC won’t add more trains, and TransLink will be blamed, and not be able to do anything about it. The Port Mann twin will be funded by a private corp, and will be in charge of raising tolls to their satisfaction. All that money that you’ll be paying to cross the bridge… it won’t go back into improving the overall system; it’ll go to paying this private corporation for the next 30 odd years.

Private corporations exist to make money. There is absolutely no difference between public healthcare and public transportation - neither can be profit-driven, elsewise the public will, in the long term, receive a worse product overall.

Finally, Falcon seems to want this to happen immediately. In some media outlets, his estimate has been by next year. Falcon seems to always forget that, since we are in Canada, there are processes by which these projects must move through. Architectural designs, safety checks, bids for the contract, etc. Things take time. And heck, usually, projects don’t even go forward unless they make sense to build!

It’s a disaprate article, I know. But Falcon frustrates me so. And, what’s worse, is it’s likely he’ll get head office once Campbell steps down. Ugh, politics and transportation….