Stephen Rees's blog

Straight Talk By Matthew Burrows

Publish Date: September 6, 2007

Its been a while since I wrote on this issue too. I don’t know what there is to be unsure about. Kevin Falcon wants a more co-operative board i.e. one that does not publicly doubt some of his ideas. Clearly, any board that feels it has a sense of responsibility to the people of this region is going to question the view from Victoria. It doesn’t mean that either of them is necessarily right, just that regional issues in Greater Vancouver are not the same as provincial issues in Victoria. For the provincial government, drunk on the power vested in them by the conventions of parliamentary sovereignty, as embodied by our written constitution, it is hard to recognize the legitimacy of the views of other levels of government. Hard but necessary.

And for what it is worth, I agree with the view expressed by Caroline Bowering Gould. I do think that Falcon is acting “ultra vires”  (beyond his legal powers) and that there are legal remedies to stop him – one them a writ of “certorari“. So there!

Straight.com

The first thing I noticed in this article is that the Straight has used the Freedom of Information Act to get the customer service reports.  When I wrote about that recently, I really did not know this.

It seems to me that the actual number of pass ups will never actually be known. For, as with so many things that happen at Translink, there really really is no reliable data. And a few of us used to try and put in for more money every year in the budget so we could get better data, but it always seemed to be the easiest thing to cut. The rationale being that it caused least damage – unlike cutting, say, maintenance, or spare part stocks. Fair enough, but I also suspect that for managers it is often easier to rely on “professional judgement” than hard data.

In the case of pass ups, CMBC rely on information called in by operators. Jim Houlahan does not say why they do not call in pass ups, and he should know. But then one of the main reasons I advocated for some of the features on the electronic fare box was that I thought we really should know what was happening with transactions on the bus. The old “coffee pot” method of collecting cash and glancing at passes and transfers really told us nothing. Of course, what I did not know was that once the data was collected the service planners ignored it, since it conflicted with a number of deeply held beliefs, and the easiest thing to do was suggest that the operators were not using the farebox properly. So maybe one reason that operators do not call in is that they have no faith that anyone can do anything about pass ups.

Similarly with complaints from the public. After a while people get the idea that there is no use complaining since nothing ever changes as the result of a complaint, so why bother.  So like the “rejected ride requests” data on HandyDART it is, frankly, worse than useless.

We should by now have 50% more buses on the road than we do have – based on the previous strategic transportation plans for the region like Transport 2021. Or the first Translink STP. Both now fond memories. That was based on both the needs of a growing population and a need to increase the transit mode share as a way of tackling traffic congestion. “Increase transportation choice” was the way the LRSP put it. And just buying more buses does not solve the problem, since those buses have to be both operated and maintained. So more facilities and more people, and more managers to manage those people. That is why you need a longterm strategic plan and not just three year “implementation” plans. And having got that strategic plan you must have the additional resources – which Translink has never had enough of since day 1.

And, of course, the pass up figure would indeed be useful ammunition in lobbying for more transit funding, or critiquing how the funds they do have are spent. And if there is one thing that Translink really doesn’t like, it is informed criticism.