[Lomac]

Originally Posted by 4444

I agree, so why are we bothering with all this crap transit bs, why not build highways, 4 lanes each way, from west van through north van to Burnaby, no. 1, but also, 4 lanes each way interrupted from Burnaby to downtown, downtown to the ferries - none of this 2 lane tunnel, 2 lane bridges, all the bottlenecks - we can spread so much further if we built the infrastructure

This lack of planning will fuck over greater vancouver a growth - little city with a little city mentality, little minded peopl

I agree, especially when it comes to Vancouver. While it certainly makes it unique in it's own way, the fact that Vancouver's council back in the day defeated the proposed Highway 99 extension through the city was, simply put, short sighted. Vancouver is one of the few major cities in North America that doesn't have a highway running through it.

The problem with updating many of today's roads is that there's so much growth that it would cost a large fortune to buy all the land required to widen most of the roads, though I can't really think of any major arterial roads that are only two lanes.

However...

Originally Posted by 4444

Bc ferries is a government entity - not sure I get this.

If it were privatized, at least we wouldn't be mandated fuel surcharges, and if the service sucked, there'd be room for a competitor to come in and steal business - cant have either of those right now

Originally Posted by 4444

Most of ur points aren't valid, much of britains transit is privately owned

Roads are a right (of sorts), they must be provided by the government (if they weren't the government would be voted out), and yes, if u wanted to allow privatization, they would be built, tariffed, and thus profitable for said builder - look at pipelines, roads are pipelines

Allowing competition is great and everything, but there has to be a sustainable market for it. Take a look at BC Ferries. If you look at it today, you'd think that it's a perfect opportunity for competition to swoop in and take advantage of their misery. However, there's not enough people looking to take a boat ride across the water. And even if there were enough, private companies have no way of being able to compete with BC Ferries. They get a huge subsidy from the government in order to keep their fares low (though I realize that it's a relative term, nowadays). There have been several companies vying for part of BC Ferries customer base, either drop-trailer or walk-on passenger, and most of either gone belly up or are barely hanging on when it comes to competing routes because they can't match the prices.

Now look at Translink. They take in over $300 million in subsidies from the government. While that money gets divvied over various branches, over a third of it goes towards their bus and trolley division. Without that sort of subsidy to offset a competitor's price, how much do you think a ticket would now cost? Sure, downtown core might be able to get away with it's own private bus company instead of Translink, but services will be largely cut, as will hours of operations. No where else in BC exists a dense enough population in a small enough area for a private company to even consider a route.

Originally Posted by 4444

Hahahahah, ya, travelled around North America maybe.

Look, North America was built on the car, but Vancouver has shit roads, ok, if we're not going to built some huge infrastructure, lets go European, high density, great mobility sans car - nope, we get translink bs

We have a so-so transit system and crap roads... World class city my arse

Keep in mind that Translink maintains over 2200km's of roads, four major bridges (potentially five in the near future), hundreds of buses and trolleys including Handydart, the Seabus, the West Coast Express and probably a couple hundred Skytrain cars. Now factor in the maintenance costs associated with looking after this large of a fleet, along with everyone's salaries. I'm sure there's a lot of wasted money somewhere within Translink, but the fact that they're able to keep even the current prices roughly around where they are is still pretty amazing.

And for the record, I've travelled through most of Europe and even there their transit system isn't exactly as great as most people claim it to be. Sure, it's great when it comes to major cities, but just like Vancouver and the GVRD, as soon as you get outside the major city hub, the quality of service drops.