If you drive a car everywhere, and you never set foot on a bus or SkyTrain, you should still be encouraging the federal government to step up with permanent transit funding.
This week, the head of TransLink and the CEOs of the Montreal and Toronto transit agencies joined forces to ask Ottawa to push forward its deadline to create a Permanent Transit Fund.
This fund, promised to start two years from now, would give some stability to major transit agencies across the country.
Across the province, the population is growing faster than roads. Housing and cars are both expensive. Density is rising fast, and that’s even without the provincial government’s new housing regulations that will allow more homes on single-family lots and near transit hubs.
We’re building an environment where more and more people ought to be able to use transit. But transit just isn’t expanding fast enough.
TransLink has to spend years playing catch up. Major projects, like the SkyTrain line extension from Surrey, or the Bus Rapid Transit projects, which will run through Maple Ridge and Langley, take ages to pull together. That’s not just because they’re big construction projects, it’s because first there’s a years-long begging tour where TransLink has to ask for money from Victoria and Ottawa.
Local transit isn’t a federal responsibility. But Ottawa has to come to the table, and it has to start doing so in a way that’s reliable, predictable, and constant.
Canada’s big metro regions are its engines of growth. For decades, they sprawled outward, benefiting from cheap land.
Now they’ve reached the outer limits of outward expansion. We have to grow upwards and inwards. It means more people in less space. This is possible to do well. We can preserve farmland and expand parks, create walking trails and bike lanes, restore streams, and plant more urban trees.
But we can’t do it if we are widening every single road, building more and more parking lots, and forcing everyone to drive because there is simply no affordable, reliable, convenient transit option.
Remember, even for those who have to drive, a robust transit system is a huge benefit. More buses and rapid transit options make for a smoother commute for everyone.
– Black Press