Translink & 0.5% vote (merged)

case in point is the knobs who pedal along 1st ave; pretty much anywhere but especially between clark and victoria where 1st is rather narrow is just stupid
.

I am going to risk becoming unpopular here, but, I think cyclists should be banned from some streets, especially considering the network of bike routes. I used to live on 6th between Granville and Cambie. It,s basically a highway, long steatch no stoplights.

I would see cyclists on there, putting themselves at risk, generally cyclists on cruiser bikes. You know where there is a bike lane? 7th, all of one block away. Irresponsible to ride on 6th. There are a bunch of streets like that.

here's a great article refuting some of the spin the NO side is tossing about.

https://darylvsworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/referendum-myths-translink-exec-pay/

it does a very good job of disputing the "executive waste" argument by using facts to tell the real story of what's going on so people can make a fair comparison between translink and transit authorities in other areas.

tldr?

some of the arguments being used by the NO side are clearly wrong and misleading.

I am going to risk becoming unpopular here, but, I think cyclists should be banned from some streets, especially considering the network of bike routes. I used to live on 6th between Granville and Cambie. It,s basically a highway, long steatch no stoplights.

I would see cyclists on there, putting themselves at risk, generally cyclists on cruiser bikes. You know where there is a bike lane? 7th, all of one block away. Irresponsible to ride on 6th. There are a bunch of streets like that.

No problem here with banning bikes on certain streets as long as cars are banned from certain streets as well.

here's a great article refuting some of the spin the NO side is tossing about.

https://darylvsworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/referendum-myths-translink-exec-pay/

it does a very good job of disputing the "executive waste" argument by using facts to tell the real story of what's going on so people can make a fair comparison between translink and transit authorities in other areas.

tldr?

some of the arguments being used by the NO side are clearly wrong and misleading.

I can understand people wanting to decouple executive pay from performance, but I can tell you from living for 9 years in the Greater Toronto area the claims by darylvsworld made about transit in the Greater Toronto Area are BS.

The TTC does not have 9 commissioners. Burlington Transit and Milton Transit are pretty much the equivalent of Whistler Transit and Squamish Transit. They are a handful of routes, most of which don't run 7 days a week or run only during peak hours Monday to Friday. The TTC is the 900 pound gorilla of transit services in the GTA.

The comparison between the West Coast Express (a subsidiary of Translink) and Go Transit (an independent company owned by the Government of Ontario - "GO") is ill-advised. GO Transit is a massive bus and train operation unto itself. It has 25 times the ridership of the West Coast Express (62 million versus 2.8 million). Go Trains do not do one route but several different routes, each run twice the distance of the West Coast Express runs, eg Barrie, Oshawa, Niagara Falls, Kitchener to and from Toronto. There are also hundreds of GO bus trips a day that are more like a Greyhound bus service than a translink trip. Go Transit operates 480 buses, 65 locomotives, 497 rail coaches, 42 bus lines and 7 rail services.

I can understand people wanting to decouple executive pay from performance, but I can tell you from living for 9 years in the Greater Toronto area the claims by darylvsworld made about transit in the Greater Toronto Area are BS.

The TTC does not have 9 commissioners. Burlington Transit and Milton Transit are pretty much the equivalent of Whistler Transit and Squamish Transit. They are a handful of routes, most of which don't run 7 days a week or run only during peak hours Monday to Friday. The TTC is the 900 pound gorilla of transit services in the GTA.

fair enough, but what about the others such as mississauga and the York Region? you say they don't have 9 ceo's; what do you base that on? when did you last live in toronto and do you know if the current administrative system is the same as what they had when you were there?

The comparison between the West Coast Express (a subsidiary of Translink) and Go Transit (an independent company owned by the government of Ontario) is ill-advised. GO Transit is a massive bus and train operation unto itself. It has 25 times the ridership of the West Coast Express (62 million versus 2.8 million). Go Trains do not do one route but several different routes that run twice the distance of the West Coast Express runs, eg Barrie, Oshawa, Niagara Falls, Kitchener to and from Toronto. There are also hundreds of GO bus trips a day that are more like a Greyhound bus service than a translink trip. Go Transit operates 480 buses, 65 locomotives, 497 rail coaches, 42 bus lines and 7 rail services.

this is also a fair statement, but the idea is to look at the big picture and what translink's ceo oversees in relation to the TTC's counterpart. the NO argument is that TTC operates a bigger system and the CEO gets paid less. this article tries to show that that is not necessarily true.

esp when there's Adanac route, which is much more pleasant to ride and actually set up so bikes move faster.

I think eastbound they're avoiding the Adanac hill which appears to me steeper than Hastings.

fair enough, but what about the others such as mississauga and the York Region? you say they don't have 9 ceo's; what do you base that on? when did you last live in toronto and do you know if the current administrative system is the same as what they had when you were there?

The TTC doen't have 9 CEOs. There may be 9 transit CEOs in the GTA. For size/population comparison, the City of Toronto alone has about the same population of of Metro Vancouver, from Langley to Lions Bay and White Rock to North Vancouver. The TTC supports double the ridership of Translink. The TTC is a company twice the size of Translink.

York region alone has over a million people. That's Vancouver, Burnaby, West and North (City+District) Van combined. Mississauga has more people (think tax base) than the City of Vancouver (with the combined populations of District and City of North Vancouver to spare).

The TTC doen't have 9 CEOs. There may be 9 transit CEOs in the GTA. For size/population comparison, the City of Toronto alone has about the same population of of Metro Vancouver, from Langley to Lions Bay and White Rock to North Vancouver. The TTC supports double the ridership of Translink. The TTC is a company twice the size of Translink.

York region alone has over a million people. That's Vancouver, Burnaby, West and North (City+District) Van combined. Mississauga has more people (think tax base) than the City of Vancouver (with the combined populations of District and City of North Vancouver to spare).

yeah sorry, meant 9 ceo's in the greater troronto area. the point the article is raising is that we have one ceo running the system for the entire region. it's simply there to show that the claim by the no side that translink's ceo is way overpaid in relation to other transit areas is not entirely true.

now i won't argue that i feel translink's ceo is overpaid, but what i'm saying is the no side needs to bring reasonable data to the table. for the most part the no side's argument is based on emotion and a few select examples of waste that represent a very small fraction of the budget. the no side seems to hang the argument on saying no to translink's corporate structure and remuneration, not on the actual points of the transit plan myself.

we can all get hung up on debating details back and forth, but they don't really address the issue of how to raise money to build needed transit infrastrucutre.

Will those on the 'no' side take the $125 challenge or show their true colours? http://4dframework.ca/2015/02/26/the-125-dollar-challenge/

The face of the "no" side:

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/video-guess-who-wants-carmageddon-over-public-transit-vancouver

I'm glad I don't hang out with people like this.

BusinessVancouver: Voting 'no' punishes the working poor

The face of the "no" side:

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/video-guess-who-wants-carmageddon-over-public-transit-vancouver

I'm glad I don't hang out with people like this.

he has clearly never played the game Carmageddon

How is the tax going to be implemented? There are business groups that say it will cost businesses thousands of dollars to deal with the new tax. I though it was just an increase in the PST at the checkout, which shouldn't cost businesses anything.

How is the tax going to be implemented? There are business groups that say it will cost businesses thousands of dollars to deal with the new tax. I though it was just an increase in the PST at the checkout, which shouldn't cost businesses anything.

Business groups will view any tax increase as a potential loss of customers due to increase to cost of goods and services, so they have a vested interest in finding something wrong with the tax. I suspect they are starting from a position "it's bad", then cherry picking any datum that supports said position. Classic "fire a bunch of arrows at the barn wall, then paint a target around the best cluster of arrows".

Of course, an alternate long term vision might be that, with improved transit, people can move further, more cheaply. With less money spent on the huge overhead of car ownership, they will have more to spend on goods and services.