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Originally Posted by Hatched
For the train I was more thinking of the sky train in Vancouver. My brother lives in Vancouver and I find it way more convenient to pay $2 and hop the train then pay $50 and take a taxi.
But I would also like to see a bullet train rather than VIA.
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I live in Vancouver and I wish it was always that easy. But if you are going any distance that would dictate using Skytrain like from the burbs. Say from Surrey going to downtown where a lot of people that live in the burbs work. It's a $5 fare and thats one-way.
And of course every time you blink Translink is telling us that they need more money and need to raise fares and taxes to pay for the system. And the fares we pay to ride the bus or skytrain doesn't just stop there.
There is the multitude of taxes and levy's that even people that don't ride the bus pay for. Like the $2.50 a month transit levy on your power bill, the fuel taxes, property taxes, battery & tire surcharges. And I'm probably missing about a half a dozen other taxes and surcharges that we pay into Translink.
We pay through the nose for transit in this city. And one of the main contributors is this cadillac skytrain system. Which of course was the most expensive system they could find a the time.
And they are not done with us yet Translink is quite blunt that fares and taxes for transit are only going to go up. And one thing that really rubs people out here the wrong about Translink. Is how an unelected body which is what Translink is can get away with continually raising our taxes.
I don't think our skytrain system is any type of model for other cities to follow especially the way Translink runs it. And I'm not aware of too many cities if any that use this system.
Saskatoon is a fast growing city but it is still too small and there is just no need to be even thinking about LRT at this juncture. Yes people will tell me there are traffic bottle necks, there are in every city.
But in Saskatoon you can still get around relatively easy by car and there is ample parking. There are always improvements that can be made in any transit system more routes, running larger buses on some routes, more express buses from the burbs etc.
If governments want people to get out of their cars and use transit then they have to give people a reason to do so. Which means making it affordable, convenient, and efficient. And they have to run it like a business because transit has competition from other forms of transportation. Which means hiring drivers and employees that aren't actually jerks and treat their customers with at least a modicum of courtesy and respect.
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I always have seen Saskatoon different from most prairie cities, the city REALLY want to develop in a way that is attractive to the international community while maintaining its charcater. Perhaps we won't follow the typical suburban mess of all prairie cities and we will set ourselves a part by having an unusually dense city on such a large, "flat" piece of land!
... but it's a necessary conversation to have considering the growth going on in both cities and the work put into visionary documents for our downtowns.
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