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Letter: High TransLink fares turning transit into haves and have-nots

Editor: It’s happened to all of us at some point — there you are, loading all the loose change in your pocket onto a Compass Card, expecting it to last through the month.
skytrain

Editor:
It’s happened to all of us at some point — there you are, loading all the loose change in your pocket onto a Compass Card, expecting it to last through the month.

Then, a day or two later, you’re stranded right in the middle of your daily commute with no money on your transit card and not enough time to reload it during the morning rush. That transit money seems to run through your fingers like sand, no matter how much money you seem to put on that little blue card.

You can ask just about any Greater Vancouverite and they’ll admit our transit system is flawed. The fares are too expensive for what you get and often the trains and buses don’t get you to where you need to be — sometimes because of rush hour and sometimes because transit simply fails to come even close to certain neighbourhoods.

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve seen two or three of my intended buses drive by, letting me know it’s full and will not be stopping. The longer I wait for an available bus, the shorter the 90-minute transit transfer window gets, throwing another three or four dollars out the window.
One of the areas of frustration is the zone system used by TransLink and the dilemma it brings along with it. Like many other metropolitan areas, Vancouver’s transit runs on a zone system. Vancouver proper is one zone. Richmond, New Westminster and Burnaby another. The Tri-Cities and the (western section of the) Fraser Valley make up the third.

The more zones you cross on your commute, the greater the cost. Seems pretty simple, right? Except the system emphasizes class inequality.
Vancouver’s real estate crisis and rising cost of living mean more people are being pushed to live outside of Vancouver. Unless you invested prior to the real estate bubble, or happen to be wealthy, it’s near impossible to afford the costs of a Vancouver home.

skytrain

By moving out to the Tri-Cities or the Fraser Valley, cost of living goes down by 22.08 28.34 per cent. Following that logic, it is safe to assume that those who live out in “zone 3” have a lower average income. But, because of the transit zone system, it is exactly those lower-income individuals who end up having to pay far greater costs for transiting down to the city.

One-zone monthly passes are $98 per month, or $1,176 per year. Three-zone monthly passes are $177 monthly or $2,124 annually.

That’s a difference of just under $1,000 annually — which is a lot of money, especially for those working a minimum wage. But there’s no way to avoid enduring that three-zone commute, every single day. It creates a class-inequality paradox, in which lower-income households are forced to move away from Vancouver in order to lower their cost of living, which is then immediately raised back up by the transit costs they have no option not to pay. The only logical solution is to move back to Vancouver — except the cost of Vancouver living is what makes people move away in the first place.
Of course, it wouldn’t be so bad if the cost of transit reflected the quality of service. TransLink continually announces neverending rising costs of transit intended to improve services.

Yet, SkyTrain and bus crowding remains a prevalent issue, with passenger flow and circulation creating chaos where passengers cannot even make it on their intended train or bus. Transit reach is also limited, in both more metropolitan areas (such as Burnaby) or further into smaller municipalities (such as Langley). This creates a scenario where most commuters must drive to their nearest transit centre and then transit from there — making neither commute solution (car or train) all inclusive, thus costing more money in the long run.
You’re probably asking yourself why you should care. Whether you are a student blessed with the life-changing U-pass, or just in a stable enough financial position to not worry about the yearly thousand-dollar difference, it probably doesn’t matter to you. But it matters to our economy.

As Vancouver’s costs push people further and further out, and our transit system makes it unrealistic for people to come back in, it is economic contributors being pushed. It is manpower that is being removed from the core Vancouver area - it is doctors, software engineers, and graphic designers, all of whom previously helped Vancouver’s economy grow and thrive, but are now restricted to their individual municipalities. It is people who can provide valuable assets to our thriving system: that is, if they have enough change in their pockets to pay for their morning commute.

Noa Fisher