Year in review: 2019 was a year of ups and downs for TransLink
Credit to Author: Jennifer Saltman| Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2019 20:00:30 +0000
Being prepared is key in public transit because, as TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond knows from experience, even the best laid plans can be derailed.
TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond.
Whether it’s cancelling and reimagining a major project in a 10-year regional transportation vision or juggling changes in daily bus service for weeks during a transit strike, 2019 was full of the unexpected for Metro Vancouver’s regional transit authority.
“Part of my job is to be agile,” Desmond said. “You set out a work plan for a year, you set out a work plan for a day, and sometimes it’s set off and you need to be able to move quickly when circumstances require it.”
At its inaugural meeting after the municipal election last fall, the new Mayors’ Council voted in favour of suspending work on a planned light rail line in Surrey and proceeding with planning for a SkyTrain line to Langley — a major pivot from what was in the 10-year plan. After that, there were some heated debates on the subject at the council table.
“The reality and threat of weighted votes from Surrey and Vancouver was, I think, very unsettling for all of these mayors, and to immediately be thrust into an extremely difficult and high stakes policy battle was obviously an enormous challenge,” Desmond said.
“If it had gone wrong, it would have set such a bad tone for how that group of people would work together in the future.”
Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum, flanked by Langley City Mayor Val van den Broek and Langley Township Mayor Jack Froese, addresses reporters following the July 25 Mayors’ Council meeting.
He said a unanimous vote in July to proceed with the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain business case, as well as a recent near-unanimous vote to prepare a regional business licence for ride-hailing were high points this year and signified that the council has gelled and is thinking regionally when making decisions.
“I’m very pleased with how they’re working together at this point,” Desmond said.
TransLink wasn’t expecting the controversy that arose around the new RapidBus line proposed for the North Shore.
The route, which is expected to begin running along the Marine Drive corridor in the spring of 2020, is delayed in part because of construction issues, but there was also debate about where the line should terminate in West Vancouver.
Residents and businesses were opposed to it going to Dundarave, and the terminus was eventually moved to Park Royal mall.
“That was certainly one of the more interesting and unexpected challenges we faced,” said Desmond.
“In a lot of ways, it helps to crystallize the public debate about the importance of transit and the work we still have to do.”
Transit riders prepare to board a sea bus to North Vancouver from the Waterfront station terminal, Nov. 1.
However, Desmond said the biggest challenges TransLink had to deal with were the labour negotiations and job action that took place in November and December.
The strike started with an overtime ban for SeaBus and Coast Mountain Bus Company maintenance staff and a uniform ban for bus drivers, and progressed to an overtime ban for drivers and then the threat of a three-day shutdown. The job action lasted for 27 days and ended with a deal struck in the middle of the night.
The peace was temporary, because SkyTrain workers issued strike notice in early December, threatening a three-day shutdown of their own. Another last-minute deal prevented the job action.
“That was obviously the most difficult period this organization’s had in an awful long time,” Desmond said. “The issue there is how do you reach a fair deal with your labour unions that’s affordable?”
Vancouver’s B-Line to UBC is one of the busiest bus routes in the Lower Mainland. Extending SkyTrain to UBC is one Big Ticket item in TransLink’s 10-year plan.
Desmond believes that although the deals ended up costing TransLink’s operating companies more than expected, the transit authority will still be able to deliver the service upgrades it has promised.
The confidence of transit users in their system, along with ridership, took a hit during the strike action. It was the first time in Desmond’s almost-four-year tenure that ridership numbers didn’t increase.
In November, overall boardings were down 1.8 per cent system wide and journeys, which can include multiple boardings, were down 0.8 per cent. The largest decrease was on SeaBus, where ridership dipped by 12.9 per cent. Bus boardings were down 3.1 per cent.
Even though job action was over by then, ridership in the first week of December was down four per cent from where TransLink expected it to be because of the threat of SkyTrain workers walking off the job.
“I hope we don’t have a ridership hangover that lasts beyond the first few weeks of December, and we’ll we’ll hit the ground running again and in January,” said Desmond.
Ridership can be tenuous, Desmond said, and although he’s confident it will bounce back, it’s now up to TransLink to convince people that the system is reliable, in spite of the fact that more labour negotiations are underway.
“Clearly, we have to get them back thinking, ‘Hey, it’s back to normal.’ Not only is it back to normal, but more improvements are coming,” he said.
Those improvements include extra cars for SkyTrain and more bus service, including new RapidBus lines in January.
The new year is also when the business case for the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain line will go to the Mayors’ Council and board of directors for approval, before it is passed along to the federal and provincial governments.
Another phase of public engagement for the long-range regional transit plan, Transport 2050, will take place in the spring, and it’s expected a final version of the document will be ready by the end of the year.
While he’s looking forward to a busy 2020, Desmond is hoping the holidays will be quiet.
“No doubt it will snow, and that’s the next thing we have to deal with,” he said with a chuckle, “the inevitable snow storm.”
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