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TransLink snapshot: Budget trimmed, ridership dips, population growing, no money to expand

May 29th, 2014 · 121 Comments

We all trekked out to Surrey (sign of where the next major rapid-transit project will go?) yesterday to hear TransLink officials talk about the annual general report on the agency.

These TransLink events are always kind of sad experience. To the rest of the world, TransLink is a roaring success — about to have more miles of subway track than anywhere else in North America, 234 million trips a year, ridership growth of 80 per cent over the last 15 years.

But there’s a sense of desperation about where it’s all going to go next, given that the agency is facing the prospect of tens of thousands more people coming into the region every year and no sense of where the money will come from to expand the system.

My brief story from the Globe here and their annual report here. BTW, I notice that, yes, the ridership numbers are down slightly, but that was also the case for Victoria, the next biggest transit system in the province. Numbers elsewhere in the province were also flat, according to BC Transit’s annual report. (That’s the agency that oversees transit for the rest of the province — remember them?) Seems to be about more than just TransLink funding or whatever — possibly fewer trips because of economic conditions or other factors.

 

 

 

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