Happy to see the recognition for Translink. Moreover, happy to see the recognition that it is the $9B of new funding for Phase 1 of the Mayors' 10 Year Plan that has made the difference. Who knew? Adequately fund a transit system and let its projects move forward and people will flock to the system and increase ridership at far greater rates than population and employment growth.
While it's far from a perfect system, Translink is doing a lot of things right and not simply treading water. It's putting shovels in the ground and building new lines, buying new trains and buses, rationalizing routes and increasing levels of service where they're needed most while making down payments on building ridership in lower demand and under-serviced areas. Translink also has to walk the tightrope of serving a 2.5M person, 21 municipality, 2,400+ km2 region riven by major rivers and lakes, extensive belts of farmland and protected ecological areas, limited highway and cross-town arterial infrastructure, a deep water harbour crossed only by two congested bridges, highly dispersed population and employment centres and a hyper-concentrated downtown core at the very top-left corner of the region that's stuck on narrow peninsula, just for good measure. It runs trolley, battery-electric, hybrid, CNG, and diesel buses, passenger ferries with unreal mechanical and dispatch reliability, commuter trains, a remarkable and steadily expanding region-spanning automated rapid transit network, and one of the most extensive and equitable on-demand para-transit systems in the APTA. It's also 100% wheelchair accessible, too, across all modes, stations, and vehicles, and has been for more than a decade for buses and since day one for SkyTrain, West Coast Express, and the SeaBus. All this on a shoestring budget for a 20 year old agency that's been constantly harried by political opponents in the region and the capitol since day one. Not bad.
Edit:
Mayors' Council today approved a $1.6B 7km 4 station extension of the SkyTrain Expo Line from its current King George Station terminus in Surrey to the Fleetwood neighbourhood, as phase 1 of an ultimate 16km 8 station extension to the City of Langley. The extension will include the purchase of 24 new Mk3 SkyTrain cars, which will be in either two-car or four-car married sets.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mayors-council-skytrain-extension-1.5224829
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No need for Go Expansion then.
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