As co-chair of the HandyDART Riders’ Alliance, since last October I’ve been sitting on a task force set up by TransLink. Our mandate is to advise TransLink on HandyDART issues. The creation of this task force and the appointment of many individuals from the HandyDART community to it is another indicator of the positive working…
Category: Transit
As TransLink turns a page
Those of you familiar with the HandyDART file will be aware of the fact that a few years ago TransLink awarded this very important contract to a for-profit, privately owned American company based in Dallas, Texas. Users and workers have been complaining about the quality of service ever since. A group I’m with, the HandyDART…
City Hall’s secret cash machine
Did you know that our Vision-Vancouver-dominated City Council has a Bid Committee that operates in secret? Council gave it authority to award contracts of any size without going out to tender whenever Council is on summer break. The Bid Committee — composed of City Hall bureaucrats (namely the city manager, director of finance, and voting department heads) — can also award contracts of up to $2 million in value at any time. That added up to 39 contracts…
Has TransLink turned the corner?
On Wednesday, March 30, a number of HandyDART users spoke to the TransLink board at their monthly meeting in New Westminster. Together with HandyDART drivers, we were lobbying TransLink to bring HandyDART service in-house. Whereas conventional public transit is operated by TransLink through a number of wholly owned subsidiaries — Coast Mountain Bus Company operates…
Lots of cake to go around
The provincial government’s decision to raise income assistance rates for people with disabilities with one hand then reduce those rates with the other has been in the news lately. Before the changes were announced, anybody forced to live on the paltry amount of $906 a month (a rate frozen since 2007) also received a free…
Arbutus Corridor: Making housing out of thin air
At long last there is some very significant progress on the Arbutus Corridor. Just last week the City of Vancouver and CP Rail, the owner of the land, reached an agreement. CP will sell this 9-km rail corridor, stretching from Marpole to south False Creek, to the city for $55 million. Many years ago the…
Time to “tap out” TransLink’s senior managers
Most folks are surprised when I tell them that TransLink spends 10 cents of every farebox dollar on the process of actually collecting that dollar. Economists refer to this as the “friction cost.” By comparison, the collection of income tax is incredibly efficient, with a friction cost so small that it amounts to a rounding…