Comment by acrooks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acrooks | Hacker News Reader

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I live in Vancouver and will be voting Yes; but I am pretty confident that the No-side will win this battle.

The group(s) that have been promoting the No vote seem to be using big numbers and mostly baseless arguments. Statements like "Translink spent $30,000 on a statue of a poodle", "The last CEO made $500,000 a year", "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" are among their key points.

It's unfortunate that the general public struggles to think in relative terms, or to be forward thinking. $500k/year is a pretty low CEO salary for that size of organization; $30,000 on public art for an organization with an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion is all of a sudden not so outrageous.

"Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" is the ultimate irony in it all. The reason this plebiscite exists is because the population is _unhappy_ with the service and they want to make it better.

Of all of the large Canadian transit systems I've used - Calgary, Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto - Vancouver's is without a doubt the best and most efficient of them all, and Translink has developed a very good plan for what they would do if the Yes side prevailed.

Oh well.

(the proposed transit plan given a successful Yes vote: http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...)

Also from Vancouver, but will not be voting because I'm not a citizen. I'd be on the fence about this decision. Not because of the statue or the CEO salary; you're right, in the grand scheme of things they aren't very important and are absolutely used by the "no" campaign to cause a knee jerk reaction in voters.

The more troubling thing about Translink is their apparent inability to execute even the simplest of projects. Remember the Compass cards? Still not in effect. Similarly, turnstiles in the skytrain still don't work, so many people don't pay.

Building new rail service and adding more bus routes seems orders of magnitude more complex than implementing a check in/check out card system or enabling turnstiles in the skytrain stations. If they fail to execute simple tasks at the cost of hundreds of millions, why would they be able to execute complex tasks at the cost of billions?

This in addition to the fact that sales taxes are the most regressive taxes you can have. Why not property tax? Only extremely wealthy people can afford property in Vancouver. Seems like a better place to start...

Like I said, I have no skin in this game. Just trying to shed some light on some of the more salient points from the No side.

I agree with you that the Compass card project has been a failure, but I don't think it is fair to fault their ability to execute a transportation project based on their inability to execute a software project. Translink has a proven successful track record in building roads and bridges and SkyTrains and bus routes.

The Compass card project is undoubtably a failure, and Translink chose the wrong contractor (the same company is responsible for another failed project in Chicago). Software is hard, and I would say to a certain extent this is a transportation company diving a little too deeply in a field for which they have no expertise.

To the property tax argument - in general, the people that own property in Vancouver probably also own cars. The largest users of public transit are obviously those who do not have cars, so then raising property taxes would largely affect people who do not directly benefit from a successful vote, no?

> Of all the Canadian transit systems I've used... Vancouver's is without a doubt... the best

I'm guessing you don't live in the suburbs or attend UBC (or, God forbid, both at the same time). While I agree that transit functions very well in the core part of the city, lack of rapid transit out to the University is a conspicuous weakness -- the 15-km commute from East Van takes over an hour by transit. With a tram or SkyTrain line it could be a third of that. Also, much of Surrey (whose population will exceed Vancouver's within a decade) is very far from any SkyTrain station. To be fair, Burnaby and New West at least are well-served by fast transit.

I think Toronto's Go Train serves commuters better than anything in Vancouver. Montreal has a similar light-rail system which I've used a few times.

In general, though, I agree with you. Vancouver has a solid transit system that could be even better with more funding, and a $500k CEO salary is neither excessive nor relevant to the argument. I'll be voting yes.

I do attend UBC, but I live in the city, so I do not suffer from the poor transit out in Coquitlam or Surrey. Building the UBC subway would certainly help the usage in the suburbs though. It would completely replace the 99, and reduce demand on some of the other east-west routes, likely freeing up more than 100 articulated buses and their drivers.

Go Transit has a good system but it's comes at a cost. For example - Langley to UBC is the same distance as Hamilton to Toronto. If you're a student, doing that roundtrip on Translink is $35 a month (U-Pass), whereas the Go Bus is $300 (PRESTO card). (If you're not a student it's $200 / $400).

Introduce vote-counting based on personal tax you have paid. More tax you have paid - more votes you get with maximum of 3 votes per person. This way you will have usually more successful people with more votes, while keeping majority of votes with less successful people. This way poorer people can still block any voting when united, but most decisions that wont affect them negatively will get passed thanks to people with more than one vote.

Sounds like a good upgrade to current system...

I think in this case at least the poorest would be voting YES because they depend on transit and pay little PST (it mostly taxes discretionary spending).

More broadly speaking, giving more votes to rich people would never fly. Even if you could scientifically show that it would improve everyone's lives. Entire civilizations have revolted over less.

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