PUBLIC TRANSIT - TOO LONG PROTECTED 

Vancouver Sun columnist Jamie Lamb recently pointed out that car and property owners are subsidizing every B.C. Transit rider $2 a trip. Why doesn't that seem right?

According to Mr. Lamb, "For every dollar it costs to operate the transit system, the province pays 46.9 cents (from your taxes), the riders pay 30 cents at the fare box, and the municipality 23.1 cents." Vancouver gets its 23.1 cents from: three cents from a hydro levy, 13.9 cents from a gasoline tax and another 6.2 cents from a non-residential property tax. All paid by you.

Now there is strong pressure from B.C. Transit for more money from taxpayers via property taxes. Hasn't this gone far enough? How many people are riding public transit?

We have allowed a small minority, aided by a willing bureaucracy, to build up a transit system that is expensive and unnecessary. The seabus subsidy alone, could provide every passenger with free taxi service to and from work every day at lower cost!

Many cities in other countries have "jitney" service -- group taxis and vans, usually traveling along one main throughfare in a straight line, with stops designated by riders. A normal rush-hour trip might have only six stops travelling from the suburbs to downtown. Most stops would be mainly in the city core. The evening return trip would drop passengers off on the main strip as close to homes as possible. Cost to British Columbians now subsidizing the present system would be abolished and riders would pay less. Instead of an expensive, over-designed transit system, operated by a self-created bureaucracy, squadrons of small businesses would be paying taxes instead of spending them.

Why not? Vancouver has a metro population of 1.5 million. Daily commuters, according to Western Living magazine, total 445,000. Just 58,000 or 12 percent use public transit (387,000 use cars). That means that 88 percent of us are allowing politicians to hoodwink us with another political mirror trick and throw away our money.

In larger cities, mirror tricks work too. In Toronto the non-publictransit-using segment of the population pays even more. With a metro population of 4.2 million, Toronto has 1.6 million daily commuters. Only 390,000 use public transportation (1.2 million travel by car).

In smaller cities? Calgary's metro population totals 723,000. Daily commuters total 339,000. Only 53,000 use public transit (286,000 go by car).

It gets worse. The subsidy increases astronomically when the longest travel distance collects the fewest riders. Some riders are subsidized at almost $20 per one-way trip. Conservative EQUITY Magazine says SkyTrain is subsidized "to the tune of about $9 per ride". That is too much. No wonder taxes are high! And, for those who claim a jitney service would put more vehicles on the road, nonsense. Jitneys are simply a kind of car pooling gone commercial, instead of telling drivers they must carry someone else in their car when they don't want to. Jitneys go in a straight line and make frequent trips, the riders walk an extra block or two which keeps side roads free from vehicular traffic. And, all those dirty, smoke-belching buses and their pollution would be gone from our streets. How much less cancer would that cause? Small motorcycles emit 50 times as much pollution as normal-sized cars per horsepower? The 10 percent of cars and trucks with defective motors and mufflers cause 90 percent of the air pollution. Watch the exhaust from city buses and wonder where other exhaust pollution is coming from? Banishing these offenders and not trying to cram us all into the planners' rigid dream of "the perfect city" could accomplish much more at much less cost.

We have to start thinking from scratch. What "grew like Topsy" isn't efficient in our changing world. Only radical change will lead us to the time when urban air is acceptable. When that happens our quality of life will improve dramatically.

* * *

< previous | chapter index | next >
back to Main Chapter Listing
back to Home Page