There are many things a young urbanite considers when choosing your preferred location in neighbourhood-centric Vancouver.
First, you need to determine where you fit on the east-west continuum, or decide if you prefer the downtown peninsula. Then, you need to weigh your lifestyle priorities in terms of easy beach access, cheap rent or local amenities. But no matter where you choose to settle, you think about your proximity to transit.
Yes, this is another column about that.
Because in the debate leading up to next week’s referendum, I’ve been utterly unsurprised to hear the knee-jerk hue and cry coming from Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation about the proposed 0.5 per cent sales tax surcharge. And I expected a certain amount of indignation from suburban motorists who incorrectly believe public transit doesn’t benefit them.
But I have been surprised to hear a certain amount of protestation from young, urban professionals who avail themselves of the walkable, livable, human-scaled lifestyle made possible by a healthy public transit system.
I mean, I get it. When our transit authority is paying not one, but two CEOs in a month what many 20 and 30-somethings are struggling to earn in a year, it is galling to be asked to pay more for a service that already takes a big bite out of your budget. It is also tempting to view a no vote as a means by which to punish provincial governments, past and present, for the short-sighted decisions made mostly by members of a generation reared in the era of the automobile — and with the outdated values that went along with it.
But a no vote won’t punish them. It will only punish us. For those with decades still to go before hitting middle age are surely among the groups with the most to lose — or gain — from the outcome of this vote.
Consider the growth projections for Metro Vancouver that predict an additional one million people will move to the region by 2040.
The generation just heading into the phase of life dominated by careers, kids and commutes will most tightly feel the squeeze of all those extra bodies, whether on transit or behind the wheel.
Metro’s aging population will also put pressure on our transportation system. But it is hard to believe the likes of former TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis, interim CEO Doug Allen or former premiers Gordon Campbell and Glen Clark plan to spend their retirement Trip-Planning their way around the region. (Although I readily admit I could be wrong.)
Rather than compare CEO salaries in a bid to justify the argument that TransLink’s governance structure is broken, perhaps we should focus on the fact that our transit system most definitely is not.
Even with the odd SkyTrain shutdown and the Compass Card delays, we have far and away one of the most user-friendly systems in the country.
This is particularly true for those of us who have flocked to the dense corridors of Vancouver precisely because the option to bike, car share, walk and take transit are integral to our quality of life.
From my home in near Fraser and Broadway, I have three major bikeways a mere pedal stroke from my door. I have an express bus and two rapid transit lines within walking distance. I can get virtually anywhere in the city in 20 minutes or less — the exception being excursions to the far West Side, where the B-Line during peak hours is, I submit, a nightmarish harbinger of things to come should the plebiscite fail.
Heading eastward, I can be in deepest Burnaby in half an hour, in New Westminster in another 10 minutes and in Surrey 10 minutes after that. If I want to go on a hike, I can get to the North Shore Mountains using a combination of bus, bike or, amazingly, boat.
Compare that to cities like Ottawa, where a $3.40 fare gets you shoddy bus service that runs every half hour or more outside of peak hours (which really stings when it’s -30 with a wind chill). Or take Calgary, a sprawling city so underserved by transit and choked by traffic congestion that running to the grocery store can take hours. Or Toronto, where disrepair on the subways and streetcars has many of my friends there figuring they’ve got a 50/50 chance of getting to work on time on any given day.
Maybe it isn’t fair to ask us all to step up to pay for the perceived mistakes and mismanagement of the powers that be. But sometimes in life you just have to cut your losses. It’s time to bury the hatchet with TransLink and the provincial government, and get moving on getting it right.
