Free SkyTrain for all!

What if SkyTrain was a fare-free service open to ride all the way from King George to Waterfront, through Canada Way to YVR and around Millenium Line?

A crazy thought given today’s standards, but the thought nonetheless crossed the mind travelling from downtown Vancouver to Surrey which cost, roughly, $10 per day, $50 a week, $200 per month, and so on.

Thus, the thought: What it would take to provide a zero-fare service to Lower Mainlanders, restricted to SkyTrain alone?

TransLink funding sources

TransLink’s revenue sources isn’t proprietary knowledge, several articles, including one issued by the transportation giant itself, have covered this complex, and strange, model. Funding is received via two key revenue-streams: Tax and user revenues.

Tax revenue:

• Property Tax: TransLink assesses property tax on the net taxable value of land and improvements within the 21 municipalities that make up its service area. 3% increase each year has been made to keep up with inflation
• Fuel Tax: Approximately 17 cents per litre of gas goes to TransLink
• Parking Tax: When someone forks over money to park, a small tax goes to Translink.
• Power Levy: Levy added to hydro bill of Metro Vancouverites. Just under $2 p/month, at its maximum.

User Fees:

• Transit fares. (The crux of this article.) Self-explanatory. Users that use the train, pay a fare.
• Bridge Tolls. Also quite self-explanatory.

* All TransLink data taken from: https://buzzer.translink.ca/2013/03/translink-101-where-does-translink-get-its-funding-and-how-do-we-spend-it/

The transpo-economics

2012’s total revenue was $1.42 billion. Sixty per cent of this total went to transit operating costs, approximately $852 million.

Transit fares made up 32 per cent of TransLink’s 2012 total funding. This equates to about $454,400,000. Not nearly enough to cover operating costs but a substantial amount nonetheless. Ostensibly, to eradicate transit fares, the $454 million in fees must be recouped one way or another. What this would mean is an increase in taxes.

Sounds crazy to increases taxes provided Canada and B.C.’s slow economic growth, but it’s about regulation and accountability being placed in the hands of taxpayers.

We are all taxed in some way or another to provide for our region’s transit infrastructure. Fuel tax, property tax, parking tax, a hydro levy, these are all currently imposed on British Columbians for the purpose of helping fund TransLink (which, by the way, is responsible for more than just SkyTrain).

If just half the number of Metro Vancouverites were taxed, about 1.2 million citizens, a small increase across the TransLink tax board, enough to equal to about $37 p/month, per taxpayer, it would make up for the loss in accumulated revenue from fares. In turn, it would be interesting to see if taxpayers wouldn’t mind paying a little more in order to use SkyTrain and related services without the need to remit payment.

Nevertheless, at the very least, we need to establish a designated regional Transit Tax, issued by municipality. A specific tax equation that outlines how much of a small percentage is taken from here and another there, must be established. Further, it must be the region to decide on the direction and choice to set a reasonably set transit tax rate.

Referendums could be held, or kept to public consultations that TransLink organizes. But Decisions and tax rates should be set by B.C. taxpayers. Whether a regional vote or piecemeal public consultations, regional decisions need to be made through regional input.

Others who do not use the train regularly or, at all, will of course raise ire over such a policy. But because we are already taxed to help fund TransLink and have been for some time, why not establish a designated regional Transit Tax and offer public consultation to help regulate and to provide spending accountability?

Furthermore, increase it incrementally, with a cap limit placed, and effectively removing the arbitrary fare system currently in place it provides a direct correlation between taxation and benefit for the many that use the system, which was, in the last quarter of 2012, about 396,500 a day, on weekdays, according to the American Public Transportation Association (p.31).

Setting tax limitations such as the power levy cap at $1.90 will also establish a level of funding that is supported by the region, where service and upgrades will depend on taxpayers, and subject to the wants and needs of the Lower Mainland.

If reading this post makes you shake your head and think a system such as the one proposed is not possible, then we need to ask ‘why?’ And perhaps we do need a body like TransLink more than we think, to regulate projects, fares and development for us?

Give to get seems the only fair solution, arbitrary fares we have no control over applied to a system we are already taxed for, doesn’t just seem, it is, extravagant. An established tax rate the region understands and has input over is the best direction for working towards beating the region’s transit funding conundrum.

Disadvantages…there’s always cons

There are other cities and regions overseas that offer free transit services to its citizens. In Germany, France and Czech Republic, free public transportation is provided in various places to differing degrees of success. To extend similar gratuitous service here is an idealistic suggestion.

But the glaring disadvantage or conscious issue of providing free transit, as also experienced in other places that provide such complimentary service, is the increased hooliganism on board. Additionally, it would be difficult to prevent the train from turning into a makeshift destination for the region’s homeless. Granted there is little stopping them now, free fares would give them the right to loiter about.

Furthermore, a decline in overall service, increased vehicle maintenance and security costs are additional direct negative impacts.

But TransLink currently has a funding issue. The taxpayers are the only source of income for our province’s services and institutions. Why not establish a tax that the region’s residents agree to, abolish fares as a benefit, and eradicate the need to scrape together pieces from other tax sources, which makes the process complicated and unnecessary. A tax is a tax is a levy…

Or perhaps we should continue with the status quo. Pay for the system just to additionally pay to use the system. Is TransLink a business or public service? Currently it seems like both and that seems odd.

The VSB, politics and a timely infographic

VSB infographic taken from the Tyee: http://bit.ly/11jKLG9

The Vancouver School Board released a letter and handy infographic that detailed what the district claimed to perennial underfunding since 2002/03.

Based on a 10-year comparison to 2002/03 provincial funding levels, the VSB estimated that it is currently operating under a shortfall of $47 million.

In 2013/14, $486 million in funding will be provided to Vancouver.

But, even with a shrinking student population, according to the reporting of the Tyee’s Katie Hyslop, the VSB stated:

“The district’s base operating budget 11 years ago was $415 million. Taking into account salary increases, collective agreement increases and changes to employee benefits, turnover, enrolment levels, cost increases, and inflation, Landry and Krowchuk calculated the cost of the services provided in 2002/03 would be $533 million today.”

Yet, what a strange way, and perhaps waste of resources, to try to prove a fiscal argument.

What justification is there to use 2002/03 as a benchmark year? Further, how can an arbitrary year’s fiscal history be reason for a present need? I’m certain if teachers were using 10-year old history books, they would think it grossly inadequate for 2013. The economy was different back then, using decade-old comparisons is like recalling salary increases of the ’90s and using it as justification for a raise in 2013 — isn’t it or am I missing something?

As mentioned, elementary and secondary student enrolment levels in Vancouver have consistently dropped since 2002 from just over 55,000, to around 50,000 by 2012, yet BCTF salaries and benefits have gone up.

Here is a list of BCTF members’ salaries for the Vancouver school district.

The calculated 2012 living wage rate for Metro Vancouver is $19.62 per hour. Even at the lowest pay grade, Category 4 Step 0, a teacher makes above the standard living wage rate for the city.

However, every time the teachers strike and picket for new a collective agreement, its (almost) always about increasing wages or salary and benefits — and all the power to them.

But what about the students?

They are used as political pawns in the capitalist game to financial providence, while the youth of B.C., and in the rest of Canada, are jobless, with surmounting debt and diminishing hope.

Take a look (After page 5) at the extravagant salaries of Vancouver superintendents and treasurer. Surrey and other district supers too receive similar or greater salary packages.

The VSB’s infographic displays $31.5 million in lost staffing, which would have included 524 entry level teacher’s jobs. Plus, another $15.5 million in supplies lost.

These are speculative numbers of course.

But what’s real is the salaries and money going into the pockets of union members who time and again use students as leverage to securing increasing amounts of funding.

During last year’s dispute, B.C. teachers refused to lead extra-curricular activities in protest to the government’s handling of the labour relations snafu. The teacher’s, among other tenets, sought 15 per cent wage increases over the following three years. The government summarily denied such demands and the situation was eventually resolved.

Unions should be held under the same scrutiny as government. The VSB’s latest plea appears at a superficial glance as another juking of the stats in an attempt to turn the faucet on just a little more, and quite timely when you consider the election just around the corner.