Waste Of The Day Awards - No TransLink Tax

Voting Value

One Persuades — Fri, 29 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

TransLink Mayors spent at least $7 million in taxpayer dollars to try and buy a YES vote – the NO side spent $40,000 on the anti-tax campaign. In a few weeks, we’ll see who got better value.

Affluent Attendants

One Persuades — Thu, 28 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

Two TransLink HR staffers mysteriously left their jobs amid allegations that nepotism played a role in the hiring of $60,000 per year SkyTrain attendants. Children of senior TransLink executives and union officials were among those hired.

Moneyed Mechanics

One Persuades — Wed, 27 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

Between 2006 and 2010, TransLink’s top driver and mechanic wage rates increased by 12.6% and 23.5% respectively, which were well in excess of inflation (6.4%).

Expert Evaders

One Persuades — Tue, 26 May 2015 07:00:00 -0700

The 10 top TransLink fare evaders in B.C. collectively owe more than $73,000 in fines, racked up from 535 tickets issued between 2002 and 2012. The top fare evader in B.C. is an Abbotsford resident who incurred 107 tickets for TransLink fare infractions and now owes an astonishing $14,583 in fines. They are among 37,000 in the province who together owe $5.7 million in fines for free rides.

Canada Line Cop Clog

One Persuades — Mon, 25 May 2015 07:00:00 -0700

InTransit BC, the SNC-Lavalin-backed owners of the Canada Line, took TransLink to the cleaners when negotiating its police deal, forcing TransLink to have at least six officers on the Canada Line at all times. This often means the safer Canada Line has as many officers on duty as the sketchier Expo and Millennium Lines – combined!

Bye Bye Billion

One Persuades — Fri, 22 May 2015 07:00:04 -0700

From 2000 to today, TransLink has lost at least a quarter of a billion dollars by not properly collecting fares from every rider.

Gilded Gumshoes

One Persuades — Thu, 21 May 2015 07:00:06 -0700

More than one-third of all Transit Police officers make six figures – 58 of 166.

Fare Evader Explosion

One Persuades — Wed, 20 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

In 2012, it was revealed that TransLink bus drivers pressed a “fare not paid” button more than 2.1 million times – meaning more than 2 million free rides for fare evaders. By 2014, that number was 2.9 million.

Control Room Confusion

One Persuades — Tue, 19 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

During the July 21, 2014, shutdown, SkyTrain control had no idea the trains were still running fine while the power was down at control. They “assumed that the SkyTrain system had stopped functioning.”

Haha Headquarters

One Persuades — Fri, 15 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

Many taxpayers have noted how the shiny new TransLink headquarters is constantly lit up – even late at night. This has led to the popular joke: “At TransLink, the lights are on but nobody’s home.”

Irked By Investigating

One Persuades — Thu, 14 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

In 2010, Transit Police failed to investigate 43% of all transit-related violent crime; 33% of all transit-related property crime; 8% of all transit-related drug offences, and 28% of all other transit-related crime. That work was left to jurisdictional police.

Single Power Source Suffering

One Persuades — Wed, 13 May 2015 07:00:02 -0700

SkyTrain used the same power source to run trains, power operations and power all communications (emails, public address, phones and radios) – but didn’t have any redundancy in the system. So when the power went down, everything did.

Flooding Foofaraw

One Persuades — Tue, 12 May 2015 07:00:02 -0700

TransLink and Pitt Meadows fought over whose fault it was that a trail attached to the Golden Ears Bridge project caused significant flooding in neighbours’ yards. TransLink spent $50,000 to try and fix the problem. “We are not satisfied with the workmanship… you’ve got to fix it,” said one city councillor. “Our taxpayers should not be financially responsible.”

Troubled Train Tweets

One Persuades — Fri, 08 May 2015 07:00:05 -0700

During the July 17, 2014, shutdown, SkyTrain control didn’t know the trains had stopped running until the public started tweeting them.

Dastardly Delays

One Persuades — Thu, 07 May 2015 07:00:06 -0700

In 2013, significant SkyTrain delays increased by 20 per cent, and the average delay time of these events grew by 10 per cent.

Concrete Conundrum

One Persuades — Wed, 06 May 2015 07:00:07 -0700

As concrete chunks fall from the 80-year-old Pattullo Bridge, TransLink did what it does best: slap a band-aid on the problem. This time, it was a $1.6 million net to catch the falling cement.

Deficient Dispatch

One Persuades — Tue, 05 May 2015 11:04:26 -0700

Transit Police spent $5,000 on a flawed report trying to justify their existence in a post-fare gate world, but the study failed to include any comparisons to any system that had decades of free flow entrance before moving to fare gates.

Plentiful Payrolls

One Persuades — Tue, 05 May 2015 10:58:27 -0700

TransLink itself had 141 employees making $100,000 or more in 2012, but it also had another 252 six-figure incomes buried in its subsidiaries. That’s a total of 393 $100,000+ employees, plus whatever the staff at InTransitBC and the Golden Ears Crossing are making. “There's no perspective and no accountability - and the reality is until there is a demand, a loud demand, from the public to stop this, things aren't going to change,” said Derek Corrigan.

Feeble Functionality

One Persuades — Fri, 01 May 2015 07:00:06 -0700

Compared with four other Canadian transit systems, TransLink had the poorest cost effectiveness, with an operating cost per revenue passenger of $3.92 in 2010. This was a third higher than the average of the other systems ($2.94).

Supply Surplus

One Persuades — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 07:00:06 -0700

TransLink isn’t falling behind, according to its independent commissioner. It’s correcting to a sustainable level of service: “The concern that the system is falling behind urban growth should be kept in perspective. During a long and financially unsustainable surge prior to 2009, transit service expanded faster than population. In both absolute and per-capita terms, the supply of transit service is still relatively high.”