mr.x Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 A great read: http://www.vancitybu...line-ridership/ Explains why UBC-Broadway SkyTrain is worth the money and needs to be done now, and why it should take priority over Surrey. Very captivating read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyzer Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 I want one down Fraser Highway to Langley before UBC. Maybe if UBC payed for like half or something, then do it first. But if not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghostsof1915 Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 My question is if half my money I pay in gas per litre is taxes. And it goes to the government, and there's a surcharge from parking going to government where is this tax revenue going? It sure isn't going to improve transit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyzer Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 My question is if half my money I pay in gas per litre is taxes. And it goes to the government, and there's a surcharge from parking going to government where is this tax revenue going? It sure isn't going to improve transit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bolt Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 It's lining good 'ol Christy's wallet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillerGenuineDraft Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Such a great read. This has so many long term benefits to it. Even with student's not getting housing at UBC, this would help a lot. I've never understood why the eastern side of Vancouver never had skytrains linking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lancaster Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 You can always tell whether a city is truly world class by how good the public transit is. Vancouver is far from world-class. I also am never able to understand why it's so costly in both time and money to build transit in Vancouver. I go Japan often and a lot of their stuff are from the 80/90's and yet they're still way better than whatever that was built for the Canada Line. Wouldn't it be better to just buy the stuff from Japan, thus eliminating the R&D involved? We already know their standards are already higher than here anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wetcoaster Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 According to Province Metro View columnist Jon Ferry now is not the time to be spending on unaffordable megaprojects as the $2.5-billion-and-counting Broadway SkyTrain Line while the economy remains in a weakened state and recovery is still on the horizon. With the economy still fragile and an NDP government in waiting, the last words anyone in the real work world wants to hear are: let's raise taxes. But that's what Metro Vancouver mayors and councillors seem desperate to do, or at least to get Victoria and Ottawa to do for them. And, boy, do they seem in a pissy mood. On Thursday, the Mayors Council on Regional Transportation was tearing a strip off B.C. Transportation Minister Mary Polak over her understandable pre-election reluctance to give the green light to the highly unpopular road/carbon/sales taxes the mayors want to impose. "It appears that political expediency rather than sound governance practice is the underlying premise," huffed Richard Walton, the North Vancouver District mayor who doubles as the council's chairman, claiming the current TransLink management setup left him and his pals virtually powerless. Then on Friday, Metro Vancouver chairman Greg Moore, the Port Coquitlam mayor, and Vancouver Coun. Ray Louie, the metro vice-chairman, whined to Ottawa about a 25-year-long "infrastructure deficit" of "rusting bridges, crumbling roads, crowded buses and subways" -- saying Metro Vancouver supports a national municipal call to fix it with "stable, predictable, long-term funding." And what will be the source of that stable cash flow? Taxes in one form or another, of course. Moore and Louie insist they're not asking for money for "frills or nonessentials." But in recent years B.C. municipalities have been far from models of financial restraint, with civic spending far outstripping inflation. Indeed, several of the 22 metro municipalities still seem to be on spending sprees. Or at least they're frittering away so much of taxpayers' money on big, fat municipal paycheques and wasteful green schemes they appear to have little left for the basics, such as filling potholes and making roads safer and less congested for the majority of road users, not just the cycling in-crowd. The B.C. Liberals, meanwhile, may have screwed up many things over the past dozen years. But no one could fault them for a lack of major transportation projects -- from the new Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges to the Canada and Evergreen transit lines and the revamped Sea-to-Sky Highway. As for the metro mayors' complaints about TransLink's weird governance setup, they've conveniently forgotten the reason it was introduced in 2007 was that then-transportation minister Kevin Falcon was fed up with their constant bickering over the Canada Line ... as were most ratepayers. The bottom line now is we're living in an age of austerity, and there's only so much money to go around. And taxpayers don't care whether it's municipal, regional, provincial or federal bureaucracies trying to extract it from them. They just want them all to stop. So, instead of hyping such unaffordable megaprojects as the $2.5-billion-and-counting Broadway SkyTrain Line, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his ilk must ditch their caviar transit schemes and dreams ... and their juicy metro committee attendance fees. Or at least they should put them on hold until the real economy, not the green dream machine, is firmly back on track. http://www.theprovin...l#ixzz2MelHo6eE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronthecivil Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 John Ferry is a fool and it's clear from line one. During down times it's the BEST time to build mega projects. Not only are they the cheapest to build at those times the contribution to the economy is maximised. That said if Vancouver wants to have a transit line perhaps Vancouver should be paying the Lion's share. With everyone getting a chip in their car not too hard to implement a congestion charge for the downtown core. Simply charge 2-3 bucks to enter the downtown core during all the peak times of transit. Use all that money to fund the extension. Would it get it all the way to UBC? Probably not, but it would certainly move it along the road. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inane Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Ferry bitches and moans about everything, he's just an old ignorant clown. KPMG just released a study regarding this: http://www.myuna.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/KPMG-report_UBC-Broadway-Corridor_Feb-272013-pdf.pdf It makes sense economically on top of all the other good reasons. And here's a report on office vacancy near transit: http://www.joneslanglasalle.ca/ResearchLevel1/Rapid-Transit-Index.pdf Office space close to transit has a far lower vacancy rate than office space without access to rapid transit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aGENT Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 My question is if half my money I pay in gas per litre is taxes. And it goes to the government, and there's a surcharge from parking going to government where is this tax revenue going? It sure isn't going to improve transit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronthecivil Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Ferry bitches and moans about everything, he's just an old ignorant clown. KPMG just released a study regarding this: http://www.myuna.ca/...-272013-pdf.pdf It makes sense economically on top of all the other good reasons. And here's a report on office vacancy near transit: http://www.joneslang...ansit-Index.pdf Office space close to transit has a far lower vacancy rate than office space without access to rapid transit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
22Sedinery33 Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Very good read indeed, hopefully more people come to realize that this needs to be done now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronthecivil Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Very good read indeed, hopefully more people come to realize that this needs to be done now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inane Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 How do you plan on paying for it? Remember, angry voters hate taxes.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronthecivil Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Voters hate taxes, so what? We tax them anyway. We need leaders, not pussies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inane Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 Man up and run on your platform of taxes to fund transit then. See how well that works out for you. Heck, if the mayors want tax money so bad they can raise property taxes (a power they already have) to get the money. But they don't. Is EVERY mayor in the region a "feline" as you put it? Not one leader in the bunch? Or are they just not stupid enough to cut their nose to spite the face? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronthecivil Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 This is a regional problem, if the mayor of Port Coquitlam raises taxes to fund transit, it doesn't make a difference if the others don't. We have a regional body (Translink) for a reason. The problem is that regional body is at the mercy of the Province who is just sitting on their ass doing nothing. Which is worse than anything because not only does nothing get done, they leave the possibility that something might get done. I think if the Provincial government, whoever it was said 'we're going to raise taxes by x and it is going to go directly to transit' people would be ok with that. THe problem is you raise taxes that go into general revenue that just disappear into a black hole. Or don't even raise taxes, take gambling money, smoking tax, small toll on all the roads, whatever, there are many ways to get the funding. There's always money when you need to expand roads--it's never a problem to find billions for new pet road projects. Why is that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inane Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 If you want to fix the black hole I would recommend major overhauls to healthcare. Get over the obsession with the US and think Sweden or Germany. Good luck with that btw. The last "pet road project" ended up creating a (soon to be massive inflow of money) toll. Ergo my plan to put in profitable road projects (don't even ask the province) as a way to generate income. You will never convince the province to put in policies that piss off the majority of people (drivers) that doesn't at least have a silver lining for them. As noted people expect silver linings at no cost at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blame Obama Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 abby sky train please!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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