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Letters
Translink does want us to buy cars
Readers respond
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Dear Republic:
The answer to Graham Anderson's question (Why does Translink want me to buy a Car, issue 166) could have been given in one, simple sentence: TransLink wants you to buy a car because, Graham, without gasoline-tax revenues, the entire SkyTrain-heavy TransLink operation would collapse.
If readers would like to see how transit should be happening in this region, all they have to do is go to the following website: gohrt.com
The moral of the story? If you want transit to succeed in the GVRD, choose affordable transit technology not for political or developer reasons, but because it is appropriate to the job and because hundreds of systems worldwide have proven that LRT attracts ridership; and, most important of all, involve citizens—and I don't mean lecture them with Power Point, I mean really involve them, at every step of the planning process.
—Elizabeth James, North Vancouver
Dear Republic:
Graham Anderson's article in the Republic has got it wrong. More positive transit advertising will not increase ridership.
Many recent European studies point to the fact that public transport in the 21st century is seen as a product, and if the public deem the product poor, they will not use it. As TransLink's percentage of population using transit has stagnated at 11% to 12% of regional population for the past decade and a half, one can assume that the vast majority of people do not like its current product.
There are so many reasons for TransLink's failure as a product that it would fill a book, but it is sufficient to say TransLink ignores the wants of its potential customers. The public have been locked out of transit discussions entirely except for a few showcase dog and pony shows so favoured by planners and politicians.
The SkyTrain and RAV metro lines are a result of this dictatorial method of planning, all metro routes being forced upon the region by senior governments: "You will get SkyTrain/RAV whether you like it or not." The result is that SkyTrain has yet to reach half of its predicted year 2000 ridership and RAV's predicted ridership which was based more on hocus-pocus rather than sound transit planning.
What Vancouver and it environs are getting is a small yet very expensive metro system fed by buses, which is contrary to the successful transit philosophy now being practiced in Europe and the US of building much cheaper but much larger LRT networks serving both where people live and to where they already want to go. It is the seamless (no-transfer) journey offered by LRT that has proven to be the product the public wants. In Vancouver, the vast majority of the population do not want to take the bus and transfer to a train to complete their trip, resulting in the public viewing TransLink as a very poor product and so they take the car instead.
But does Falcon, Sullivan, Ladner, TransLink or the GVRD understand this? No!
Malcolm Johnston, Light Rail Committee, Delta, BC
Dear Republic:
While I agree with the humorous incongruity between some elements of the current Conservative Party and the so-called NASCAR demographic they are trying to woo (Books we’re reading, issue 166), you are incorrect on the origins of the Social Credit party in Alberta.
William Aberhart founded the party in 1934 well after prohibition had ended in Alberta. While there was a prohibitionist element in the party whose base after all was listeners to Aberhart's "Back to the Bible Hour" radio program, prohibition was never a raison d'etre of the party.
The primary focus in the early years was the bizarre monetary reform policies of Major C H Douglas, founder of the Social Credit movement in Britain. While Alberta had draconian liquor laws during the first few decades of Socred rule, it is worth noting that they were no stricter than under the previous United Farmers of Alberta government, and not notably stricter than many other provinces.
—Gregory Mawson, Prince George, BC
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
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