Public transit is an important public good. If funded and designed well public transit makes our communities better places to live. If underfunded and used as a political football public transit will never achieve it's potential.
Our current regional transit system is managed like a quasi-private corporation. Executives are paid outlandish salaries [when there are children going hungry it is a crime for anyone to be paid as handsomely as these people are]. They are beholden, it seems, to next to no-one. The regional mayors, for their part, lack the real courage to stand up to the regional transit authority. The provincial government has managed to absent themselves from meaningful involvement. The entire system is, true to BC form all about political oneupmanship. One almost wishes for the days of highway patronage of the old style Socreds who built highways to win votes.
Everyone sings the chorus to "we want sustainability," but they are so off tune and dysrhythmically to sound worse than a run of the mill Sunday church choir. One wonders if any one of the mayors, MLAs, or pundits lobbying for more transit dollars could define sustainability if asked. And, if they could define it, if any of them would define it the same way? I suspect not.
The current transit referendum asks us to vote over millions of dollars for a transit system that kind of works with little idea of what the real plan is.
Here's one problem with the idea of a sales tax: the underlying basis of that tax is that it will disproportionately affect those least able to pay and most likely to take transit. That is, poorer people who spend a higher percentage of their disposable dollar on basic needs will end up paying more for the basic items they need. To add insult to injury those with lower incomes are more likely to live further out on the transit system, to have to rely upon the system more, and will already be paying an exorbitant amount in transit fares.
From a purely local UTown perspective improved rapid transit to UBC will only increase housing density. Increased density, while making money for the Developers tied to UBC's business operations, will only decrease the quality of life for those of us already living in UTown.
Fundamentally the transit referendum is about subsidizing the real estate development industry of the lower mainland. It is a wealth transfer from the majority to the elite minority who are raking in big dollars by revalourizing land through the development of public transit. This is not a new plan, it's one used by developers historically and the world over: use the mechanisms of the state to take money from the majority to fund the profit making ventures of the minority. UBC, for example, wants a subway so that they can realize the highest rate of return off the land they have. The same goes for each of the town centers created by the regional plan and the expansion of public transit.
The push for transit in Metro isn't about ecology, sustainability, or making our communities nicer: it's about using public means to facilitate the accumulation of profit by a minority of developers. It's a form of social theft.
So when I get my paper mail in ballot I'l vote no to social theft, no to the developer tax.
