Why You Should Vote No On the Transit Referendum

My ballot for the Metro Vancouver transportation referendum arrived in the mail today. Yours may have as well and, if it hasn’t, it should be along shortly. I will be voting “no” and you should as well. To be clear: a no vote doesn’t mean that I am — or that you are — against public transportation. My no vote will be a vote against an ill-conceived and unworkable compromise plan that proposes to badly misallocate taxpayer dollars and that, rather than settling any of these issues, is certain only to be the first of many grabs for your wallet.

Let me pose a few questions:

Does the map of proposed transportation improvements seem to be comprehensive and/or truly final?

• Do you have confidence in the present Translink structure to effectively execute the proposed projects?
• What, if anything, prevents the government from coming back for more of your money if the costs of the Mayors’ Transportation plan prove to be higher than expected or requires expansion?

Take a look at that map. What on Earth is the point of a Skytrain line heading towards UBC that terminates at Arbutus Street? That’s a bait-and-switch on par with some of those ultra-discount European airlines that fly into unknown tertiary airports and as a result you find out that your flight to “Paris” actually landed somewhere in rural Holland. There’s a reason why it’s called the “Mayors’ Transportation Plan” — the map that we’re being asked to vote upon is the result of horse trading between the leaders of municipalities in which most of the people of the region actually live and those which might be described, to borrow from Neville Chamberlain of all people, as being far away places of which we know nothing. I’m at a loss for any good reason why, to pick one example, Vancouver taxpayers ought to vote for a tax increase that will fall most-heavily upon them but where the single largest investment will be in building light rail in Surrey and Langley. That’s something that the “Yes” side leaves out of their ads. You should vote no because this is an incomplete transit plan driven by politics rather than people’s needs. If you’re a supporter of improved public transportation then you should be against this plan because it’s a bad one.

I would suggest to you that one of the reasons why the “No” side seems to be winning the fight for public opinion at the moment, despite being severely outgunned financially, is the condescending and arrogant campaign being run by many “Yes” advocates. A large percentage of the “Yes” propaganda appears to be designed to do little more than convey the message that, “transit is good and so you should vote for this or you’re a bad person.” I would argue that this off-putting tone is a direct result of the underlying situation that the “Yes” campaign faces. There is little reason for any of us to have confidence in the existing Translink structure to be a good steward of the public’s money or to bring any of these improvements in on time and on budget. There’s an old lawyer’s adage that when you have the facts on your side you should argue the facts, that when you have the law on your side you should argue the law, and that when you have neither you should pound the table. Faced with the mission of getting the people of Greater Vancouver to vote to write a blank cheque for a shaky plan to be executed by an organization that stands very low in public esteem is a daunting task. That’s why so much of the “Yes” campaign consists of table pounding.

In the paragraph above I mentioned that the voters are being asked to write a blank cheque. I am certain that some will object to that phrase. After all, have not the advocates of the “Yes” side argued, ad infinitum, that the cost of the propose .5% sale tax increase will be “only” a trivial amount? That — if we hand-wave away the fact that the plan also depends on a massive infusion of taxpayers’ money from other levels of government and that means that simply quoting the cost of the sales tax increase significantly understates what many of us will pay — is true only if the .5% sales tax increase is the only bite that the taxman takes at the apple. What do you think that the odds are that that will be the case? I would asses the odds of that particular outcome being zero percent. Once we allow one local sales tax increase for this “worthy cause”, the political establishment will go to that well time and time again. To borrow what Kipling once wrote of the Vikings, “if once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.”

In other words, the true referendum question ought to be something like: Do you want to sign a blank cheque made out to a shaky organization to execute an incomplete and jumbled plan?

The sensible answer to this question, regardless of how you feel about public transportation in general, is a strong no. Before we vote for a single dollar for this, or anything along these lines, we need to demand a reformed and accountable administrative structure for public transportation and a plan that provides value for money for those who will pay.