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LETTER: TransLink has failed to provide user-friendly transit

Delta and Surrey residents are being shortchanged by transit system, writer says
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Editor;

TransLink is again using scare tactics to bully politicians into shaking down the taxpayer for more money to keep this bloated and incompetent bureaucracy in business.

The problem for TransLink is that it continues to operate a 1950s bus system and a 1970s rapid transit system in the 2020s. Demographic change, and the inability of TransLink to actually plan for the future has created a classic money pit.

Prior to the opening of the Canada Line, South Delta residents used to enjoy a direct (seamless) journey to downtown Vancouver, but after the Canada Line opened, those same transit customers have been forced to transfer at Bridgeport station, to continue their journey and increasing journey times by as much as 30 minutes.

The result today is clearly evident as where once there were standing-room-only express buses are now near-empty buses, especially from South Delta, and this on a transit route having one of the worst highway "choke-points," the Massey Tunnel, in the Lower Mainland!

That TransLink has utterly failed in providing a user-friendly transit service from South Delta/Surrey to Vancouver clearly demonstrates TransLink's sheer incompetence in transit planning and why throwing more money at this organization will be just flushing tax monies down the proverbial toilet.

Public transit is a "motherhood and apple pie" issue, with little public scrutiny, but in Metro Vancouver it has become a mantra for regional politicians, with zero knowledge of modern transit, that continue to blunder on, approving expensive and politically prestigious, yet questionable transit projects; always expecting the taxpayer to ante up, yet failing to provide the basics for the transit customer: a user-friendly public transit system.

Who is not afraid to "bell the TransLink cat"?

Malcolm Johnston, Delta