Creative Accounting
There’s going to be lots of attention paid to transit financing in the next few weeks, as funding for TransLink’s plans comes to a head and the Canada Line opens. And no doubt a lot of retrospective quotes will be pulled out for full ironic effect.
[Does anyone have a quote from a Canada Line (nee RAV) spokesperson that assures us we will have a hundred thousand passengers on opening day. Anything less and TransLink has to make up the difference in revenues. Which is now apparently the case: "The Canada Line, to open in August, isn't expected to see its projected 100,000 riders a day until 2013," according to the Sun.]
For real transit afficionados who enjoy opening up old arguments, let’s go back to the first SkyTrain, then known as ALRT. Alan Hart of VIA Architecture posted an old Province story on the back-and-forth taking place back in 1982:
Bob Bose, chairman of the rapid transit committee of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, calls the Advanced Light Rapid Transit system a billion-dollar gamble.
“The wisest and most prudent thing to do,” says the Surrey aldermen, “would be to abandon this unproven technology and begin converting immediately to a conventional system.”
More here.
(Thanks to Jordan B.)
big thank you for the link. =)
From Jordan Bateman perhaps? I guess he’s at least consistent: Gateway highways are very conventional of which he is a great fan, and expensive too, like the streetcars he proposes (wouldn’t buses with immaculate street furniture provide mobility, and give a sense of permanence without the high cost and disruption by construction). He seems to have taken in more than a few people that he is transit friendly.
Gateway will destroy regional liveability plans. Massive spending on transit won’t reverse the damage.
At least one person on that council is not always happy with convention. Mayor Green has shown that he is not a Bateman fool and has ruffled a few feathers and has broken the timesome convention of Langley District politics.