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Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Monorail Song
MARGE: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken!
BART: Sorry Mom, the mob has spoken!
“A town with money is a lot like a mule with a spinning wheel,” smooth-talking conman Lyle Lanley tells the people of Springfield. I don’t know why, but that makes a lot of sense to me at the moment. It’s easy to see how the people of our fair province could benefit from learning the story of how the people of Springfield were suckered into buying a Monorail system they had no real use for. Oh, and before any wags write in – yes, I’m aware that the Skytrain isn’t actually a monorail.
My response, on hearing of the B.C. government’s $14 Billion plan for the expansion of public transit over the next dozen years consisted of two words and seven letters (I’ll leave you to sort out the configuration). “Transit Plan to Help B.C. Reach Greenhouse Gas targets” read the press release that crossed my iPhone – you do that if you want, but leave me the hell out of it. What we have here is the worst of all possible outcomes – a government that I voted for (and whose campaigns I donated to) promising to spend thousands (and probably tens of thousands, before all is said and done) of my money on something that I don’t want in order to further a cause that I don’t believe in.
My position on public transit is that I’m against it. If you want to get around on wheels, go and buy your own damn car – or patronize the private transit services which would spring up in the aftermath of a round of transit privatization. Indeed, were it not for excessive government regulation and taxation I could have bought something newer than three years old (which is now five years old) and I could have bought a more expensive car. The choice between me buying a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee and some shmuck getting to drive the bus really isn’t a choice at all, so far as I’m concerned.
There’s a rational argument in here somewhere. It isn’t all just fun and fulmination. The truth is that, for the most part, public transit isn’t an economical form of transportation. Even now, to get from my home to Vancouver and back would cost me $11.75 during the day and take me around two hours. By way of comparison for me, a single individual, to drive from my home to Vancouver and back would cost around $5 in gas plus a combined $11ish in car and insurance payments – and, depending upon the traffic, could be done in half the time.
Now, that might sound like a win for transit (setting aside the intangibles) until you read the fine print. Total revenue from transit fares totalled roughly $310 Million in 2006. The total cost of transit operations for the same year was over $545 (these figures both come from the 2006 Translink annual report). The rest was paid for through taxes, notably fuel taxes and, for some bizarre reason, a tax on BC Hydro bills.
In other words, the actual cost of that transit trip is hidden by taxpayer subsidies and the real cost of the car trip is inflated by taxation. Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation (not 100% accurate, but a useful thought experiment), we discover that the real cost of that bus trip would be $20.66 and the cost of the car trip lower trip, minus gas taxes for transit, probably would be somewhere in the fifteen dollar range. And even that’s a false accounting for the car – since it assumes that the car is using only for the purpose of commuting to and from Coquitlam to Vancouver. If you, on the other hand, calculated that the car was used for commuting, say, 2/3’s of the time and otherwise for other purposes, the cost of that trip becomes $12.26.
Frankly, it boggles the mind as to how it costs Translink as much as it does to carry passengers around. Of course, where there’s a will, there’s always a way – and no one is better than government when it comes to wasting our money.
Of course, even If this was to work, it would depend upon the project being completed in a form at least somewhat on-time and on-budget. Count me as sceptical on both counts. I grew up in the area where the planned Evergreen line is supposed to end. I recall my parents taking me and showing me where the Skytrain was supposed to go in two decades ago. Knowing how these things work, I think that we can expect that the transit system will be completed by a garrison of People’s Liberation Army engineers just in time to inaugurate the Canada Two-Two-Five celebrations of their fraternal allies in Ottawa.
Alas, we’re well beyond the point where these is anyone left other than myself to speak for me on this issue. For some strange reason, we’ve all just blithely accepted that it’s your and my responsibility to pay for the grotesquely expensive wet dreams of transportation central planners without complaint and with perfect good cheer. Perhaps that’s not the most public spirited of sentiments – but I, for one, would be of much better cheer if I were the proud owner of a $50,000 car, rather than the proud wage-slave of some concrete monstrosity that I will ride a maximum of fifteen times during my lifetime and then only while in such a state of heavy intoxication that I will only fleetingly recall the experience. And, given that I’m already twenty-four and this isn’t supposed to be completed until I’m thirty-something, I doubt I’ll even get that much use out of the system.
Seriously, folks, $14 Billion (and really $20 Billion or $30 Billion or whatever by the time all is said and done) is a lot of money. We could find plenty of better things to do with it. While I admit that burning it all in a giant bonfire might marginally contribute the global warming-induced end of the human race, at least it would be kind of pretty and cause fewer traffic headaches. Or, we could get really creative. For that kind of money would could buy some little country in Africa and get its people to give us all piggy-back rides to work. Or, we could dispense with work altogether – for that kind of money we could buy ourselves a nice-sized army and use it to conquer a few small and resource-rich areas and subsequently live off of them. Or we could build a nuclear arsenal and get rich by demanding that assorted countries pay us not to kill them all.
I can only hope and pray that this is the only folly the people of British Columbia ever embark upon. Except for the popsicle-stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. And that escalator to nowhere…
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on January 17, 2008 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink
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Comments
psst. you forgot to add in the cost of roads, oil subsidies, oil spill cleanup costs, etc, in your car costs.
it's understandable though...that might ruin your otherwise coherent argument for riding around on the backs of african slaves.
nice to know that people like you still exist in our community.
Posted by: also taxpayer | 2008-01-17 9:14:03 AM
Ah, my old home, Lotus Land. Where no conservatives exist in the Legislature, where "progressive policies" are embraced by all parties. Gordo wants to stay elected through the 2010 Olympics and what better way than to out-NDP the NDP. Lower mainland politics 101 dictate that, in the spirit of being perceived as "green", the war on the personal automobile continue despite the overwhelming desire for suburban lifestyle (including the SUV) resulting in sprawl all the way to Chilliwack, all to avoid fettering the NPD legacy of the ALR or building decent freeways.
Meanwhile rural BC, outside the influence of the Calgary summer home market and NE oil patch, will continue to decline as Liberal policies have built on those of the NDP ensuring forestry and mining become sunset industries. Add to this the ultimate disaster of the more complete Liberal treaty conversion to apartheid homelands. But since less populous rural ridings have mostly reverted to the NPD, Gordo has more or less written them off as he will the rest of the Province after 2010.
Adam, I'll bet it almost makes you wish for a homegrown Ron Paul!
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-01-17 11:24:33 AM
John Chittick - I agree with your take, except that the rural population has reverted to the NDP. Living in rural BC, most people around here are very conservative in their views. They are also very frustrated in having no alternative to either the NDP or Liberals, which means we have no voice.
From my understanding of politics in California, I think it is much the same.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-01-17 12:43:58 PM
It would be all in good cheer if at the end of the argument Yoshida did not leave us with the mind-altering suburban hellholes as his preferred option to some decent urban planning that must center around good public transit.
The problem is that cars, highways and vinyl clad monster houses of suburbia all come together as a package, topped with palpable mental damage of its long-term inhabitants. That's where 12-yr old Rachel is dreaming of hitting jackpot as a hooker on Cordova, and her little brown neighbour Harminder is loading a 9mm Beretta for tonight's drive-by. Down the street, the downtown office worker is contemplating suicide, the third-world peasant across just killed his ugly brown wife for being late with dinner, and even further down someone is torturing kittens in a Satanic ritual. That is true suburbia, and that's essentially what Yoshida is arguing for, as you can't separate the $50000 car in his Coquitlam driveway, with its inherent highways, single family dwellings on quarter acre, and Wal-Mart parking lots from the profound sense of loneliness and hopelessness that those places generate.
If creating livable spaces where people actually feel a sense of place and membership in a larger community, or where the brown peasants have to learn English, what country they live in and some basic manners, or where kids' perception of life extends beyond the local shopping mall, if all that requires dragging the masses out of their cars onto the streets and to public transit under the guise of fighting global warming or any other nonsense, then it's all worth it indeed. Tax me, and tax the fatuous masses in Surrey, Coquitlam, Langley, Richmond, Maple Ridge and all other forgettable hellholes, and build us the shiny rails.
Posted by: resp | 2008-01-17 1:02:29 PM
Alain
I was thinking of ridings which were NDP prior to 2001 which had gone Liberal then reverted to the NDP in 2005. The Island experienced this as did other mostly rural ridings.
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-01-17 2:30:35 PM
John - point taken and understood.
I must admit that I have never been able to understand how any intelligent thinking individual could vote NDP. Anyone with an once of sense need only look at their track record if nothing else where they leave a trail of economic disaster to say nothing of all the moonbat policies they support.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-01-17 3:35:09 PM
I'm not sure you have a grasp of the need for transit in our city. We have high urban density and are closer to Tokyo and New York in terms of citizen's day-to-day lives, especially when it comes to getting around. You can crunch numbers all you want, it's always more expensive to travel in dense urban cores unless you're walking or riding a bike: something that many Vancouverites do on a regular basis.
On the cost front, transit and housing are expensive here, however, other things such as dining out, are often cheaper. While I agree Translink has not been the best organization to run municipal transit you need to get your ducks in a row before you start pointing fingers at political groups that were not involved in the decisions. You also seem to need a broader understanding of how the economy encompasses more than this narrow subject.
Posted by: Ryan | 2008-01-17 3:53:36 PM
Alain
Agreed that your average NDP supporter is brain-dead from the asshole up, but on the other hand at least the NDP don't try to masquerade as anything but green union-lackey socialists. The BC Liberals on the other hand try to call themselves "free enterprise" or "centrist" which I guess means go as far to the left as necessary and then some to pick up all the extra votes needed to stay in power as those BC conservative suckers don't have any other voting choice in the matter unless they want the NDP back - ain't it great!
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-01-17 3:59:49 PM
Fascinating, ignoring all the auxilliary cost for both system, if we would drop all public transit and everybody would get in their car do you really think that:
1. You would still make your trip in 30 minutes.
2. Where would you park? Raze the downtown eastside and plaster it with Parking Garages? (I am sure you're in favour of this).
BTW, where in your calculation DID you account for parking?
Extension of the Skytrain lines is probably the smartet move to get a mass of people around, short of you wanting to widen highways and inner city streets so that all the cars can fit on it. Where would you like to re-locate those people to? Maybe on your lawn?
Posted by: translink | 2008-01-17 5:16:03 PM
RESP - I like my (hypothetical) $50,000 car - or my real $15,000 car, my highways, the suburban house that I grew up in, and my Wal-Mart (well, not really - I don't actually shop much at Wal-Mart, since most of their products are cheap junk - but I do like my shopping malls and my big box retail stores). The wonderful thing about freedom, when it's done right, is that if you like to live in some urban cesepool of junkies and other assorted undesirables, you have every right to do so - but not the right to force me to pay to transform the place I live against my will because it offends your sensibilitiess.
Translink:
1) I'd widen the hell out of the major highways. Problem solved. No one, not really, takes transit out of my neighbourhood anyways. My garage is full.
2) If I was the King of Vancouver, the first thing I would do is have the whole of the Downtown Eastside burned to the ground so, basically, yes.
As for what we can do with the people:
a) Those from back East, from the States, and from abroad can go the hell back to wherever they came from.
b) Those with mental problems can go back into institutions.
c) Those who commit crimes can go to jail or, better yet, can be sentenced to work on chain gangs, assisting in road construction.
Yeah, I did neglect to account for parking. The calculations still make driving cheaper than transit.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-01-17 6:27:43 PM
Apples and oranges, guy. You still left out the cost of roads. Putting random numbers into an opinion piece doesn't give your point any credibility among anyone capable of basic critical thinking.
Also: The transit-riding poor (and transit-riding middle class, and transit-riding rich) pump the gas, pave the roads, design the bridges, and build the cars that give you such a hard-on, and pay taxes that subsidize all of them as well. You pay for my transit, I pay for your roads. So does that make you a communist, too?
Posted by: Paranoid Leftoid, I guess | 2008-01-17 10:43:47 PM
I'd like to see buses run without roads.
For that matter, commercial transportation is road-dependent.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-01-18 2:08:01 AM
You are stating the obvious, and leaving out the other half.
Less commuter traffic means lower road costs means part of the road costs are directly related to commuter traffic and should be included in their total cost. Multiply the total road cost by whatever percentage of trips commuter traffic represents.
Posted by: Mrs. Doubtfire | 2008-01-18 9:04:20 AM
Adam,
> 1) I'd widen the hell out of the major highways. Problem
> solved. No one, not really, takes transit out of my
> neighbourhood anyways. My garage is full.
You may want to read up on what happens when highways get wider, usually it doesn't improve traffic flow, it most of the time actually has the opposit effect. Same thing if people would stay in their stupid lanes instead of trying to "jump ahead" traffic would flow better.
But how exactly you'd like to widen #1 into the downtown core (and still get a benefit) is a bit of a puzzle to me, but I am sure you can explain where the land for that expansion would come from.
> 2) If I was the King of Vancouver, the first thing I would do is
> have the whole of the Downtown Eastside burned to the
> ground so, basically, yes.
Gee, there's a shocker. You;'re probably the kind of guy who only goes into the "dirty city" if he can't avoid it. Forget that people have lived in cities longer than in suburbs. Cities are quite livable, so is Vancouver, every place has it's problems.
> As for what we can do with the people:
>
> a) Those from back East, from the States, and from abroad
> can go the hell back to wherever they came from.
How many Generations do we go back? Judging by your last name you're family didn't come form Canada either. Where would we ship you to?
> b) Those with mental problems can go back into institutions.
Now, THAT would require you to actually pay taxes to have these institutions open. Are you proposing an increase in taxes to pay for this?
> c) Those who commit crimes can go to jail or, better yet, can
> be sentenced to work on chain gangs, assisting in road
> construction.
Only if this also goes for people who drive above the speed limit or cut people off and in general behave on the road as if they are the King of Vancouver.
> Yeah, I did neglect to account for parking. The calculations
> still make driving cheaper than transit.
Really? I got rid of my car last year (albeit not necessarily in a good way) and haven't thought about getting a new one but I do see the "Parking" signs out there and it looks to me you're out ~20 if you park in the downtown core, maybe "only" $150/month if you're lucky, but that's still more than I would pay for my transit pass (don't need one, I can walk to most places, bike if it's further (yes, even out in the burbs to visit friends) or if all else fails rent a car or take the bus.
Posted by: translink | 2008-01-18 11:58:06 PM
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