The federal government is poised to release their next-generation transit investment program, the Canada Public Transit Fund. It may surprise you to learn that not a single penny of this $30-billion program is allowed to go toward stopping transit service cuts. Since 2016, it has been the federal government’s policy to limit the public transit funding it provides to building new subway or light rail infrastructure or buying new buses. It cannot be used to make existing transit more reliable by increasing service hours and the frequency of trains or buses. This is despite studies showing that these measures are the most important drivers of key outcomes like ridership growth and emissions reductions.
Give it another year and our many layers of government will be banning busses because they “cause traffic” and stopping commuter trains because they interfere with shipping.
It feels like I’m missing something, maybe because I’m not a politician or a transportation engineer. It’s very common that upper spheres of government will provide extra funding focused on capital expenditures like building new infrastructure but won’t commit to operational expenditures like maintenance and salaries.
I wonder if it’s some sort of political game of being able to claim funding for shiny new things, because expansion is flashier than maintenance. Or maybe there’s a real governance aspect to it, considering that OPEX should stay under control at the right level as to not overstep the scope of each sphere of government - transit agencies should not grow accustomed to funding that is supposed to be extra. IDK, I guess I’m not ready to have an opinion on this. I’ll just trust whatever the folks at Movement say.
Nationalize public transit.
That’s the fucking solution - it’s a public service not a business.
Most if not all transit agencies in Canada are already belong to the public (as opposed to private businesses) already, no? TransLink mentioned in the article sure is, BC Transit too. BC Feries too… (kind of, crown is the sole shareholder).
edit: lol what even does it mean to get downvotes for this
Public yes, but not nationalized. User fees and ends-means and run-to-fail has severely damaged the critical resource that is our bc highways ferry system, and removed any reliability from the transit systems which are our main evacuation system in emergencies. These are services classed as Emergency and Essential that can barely provide minimal service in optimal circumstances, let alone under stress.
We have failing boats, fairweather trains, ditched buses, etc. Why? Costs of doing it right is not borne out by user fees and gov proceeds are insufficient. A guy in castlegar shipping to Vancouver pays nothing extra for road access aside from fuel costs; shipping it further to Nanaimo or Victoria means massive cost increases hat he’d rather not pay in taxes OR user fees. So while he enjoys access to roads maintained by Transpo, he sneers at doing his part to maintain a ferry system and will consistently vote against smart money and seamless service because some fucking suit from Edmonton told him user-pay is better for ferries because then it’s the others’ problem. Screw those guys.
Buses. Paid mainly by the gov but with user fees to ensure the poorest can’t use them. And still the buses are in the ditch at the Markham turnoff in the winter for lack of winter tires. User fees do not support a decent tire budget, let alone an actual biz continuity plan.
There’s Government Service, and there’s Public Service Badly Managed for Profit. Hint: if our ferry system tries to bill itself as a tour operator, it’s in the latter group.
Public yes, but not nationalized.
What’s the distinction here? You mean that you want it to be federal instead of provincial? Or that a govt-owned company doesn’t count as nationalized because its governance is too similar to a private company?
What I sparsely understood from your comment is that these agencies need more govt funding and less reliance on fees, which I totally agree. Not sure if that’s what nationalizing transit means, though.
There’s Government Service, and there’s Public Service Badly Managed for Profit. Hint: if our ferry system tries to bill itself as a tour operator, it’s in the latter group.
So is the problem with BC Ferries that it’s badly managed and the way it markets itself… or is the issue that it receives too little govt funding? I think it’s the latter.
Yeah, these crown-corp/government owned corp systems are run like a for profit business because they aren’t funded enough to run like a true public service. On the flip side this is exactly why governments do it, they can say, “hey we gave them $x. It’s their problem if they can’t make it work, not ours.”
No worries. 50-50 chance the anti-science guy is gonna get in and we don’t have to worry about funding for this any more.
There’ll BE none.
