The TransLink board of directors' recent out-of-touch-with-reality theatrics can only further diminish Metro Vancouver residents' views of the transportation body's governance and administrative competence.
Restoring public confidence in TransLink calls for substantive new policies that have immediate, tangible effects, with benefits for average, and, in particular, low-income and ambitious Metro Vancouver residents. What is needed?:
1) An immediate reversal of the (TransLink board's) monumentally stupid decision to remove a long-serving, ostensibly competent CEO, Ian Jarvis, from his position, and the cancellation of hiring a replacement CEO;
2) An immediate 30 per cent reduction in all of TransLink's senior executives' wages/benefits - to be in place at least until the end of TransLink's proposed 10-year financial plan- 2025;
3) An immediate 15 per cent reduction in wages/benefits of all Metro Vancouver cities' councillors and mayors, to be in place until the 2018 civic elections;
4) A clearly articulated TransLink program that would provide to low-income individuals/families four-times-yearly refunds of the (upcoming referendum's) proposed 0.5 per cent provincial sales tax increase (in Metro Vancouver), similar to the federal GST rebate program, perhaps administered by B.C.'s Ministry of Finance;
5) A significantly subsidized monthly bus pass program for minimum wage earners, low-income families and impoverished groups to be in place by September 2015, if possible, with the provincial and federal governments contributing to its annual costs during the 2015-to-2025 period;
6) Expansion of TransLink's student U-Pass program to all post-secondary institutions in TransLink's service area starting in September 2015;
7) An immediate assumption of all TransLink debts and financial obligations for the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges by the province of B.C., with all tolls for crossing these bridges permanently removed;
8) A declared policy position of TransLink's board of directors that residents of and visitors to the TransLink service region will never again be expected to pay tolls for bridge, tunnel, and road use.
Responsibility for funding the construction of vital infrastructure within B.C.'s primary economic engine, Metro Vancouver, should be co-shared by all of the province's residents and businesses.
Roderick V. Louis, by email
