iNsights wEst sUrvEy, March 4 to 10, 2016 JUNE 2016 BCBusiness 41
since, if there are several town
centres along one line, people
are going both ways at rush
hour. That means a road and
transit network in the Lower
Mainland can serve potentially
twice as many people as in a
region where the pattern is
predominantly suburban-to-
downtown. But a more e©cient
network alone won't solve the
region's congestion woes.
According to Geoff Cross,
TransLink's director of strategic
planning and policy, the average
mileage in the region is currently
6,500 kilometres per person a
year; the rejected transit plan
aimed to bring that number
down by a third, to about 4,400
kilometres—a di'erence of 2,100
kilometres per person per year.
Making the big improvements
to transit that were outlined in
the plebiscite was only going
to reduce the mileage by about
500. The next 1,600-kilometre
reduction would only come
from making it more expensive
to drive—specižically through
mobility pricing. Sophisticated
mobility pricing, like the kind
Singapore has, charges people
based on how much they drive
per year, how many bridges they
cross and whether they make
their trip during high-conges-
tion periods. And neither will
work alone. Both have to be in
place to get the full reduction.
For the moment, however,
those mechanisms are a long
way off. Signižicant improve-
ments to transit, even with the
boost from the recent federal
budget, won't arrive for several
years. And mobility pricing,
something that the minister
in charge of TransLink, Peter
Fassbender, has made favour-
able sounds about recently,
would take at least •ve years to
•gure out how to make it work.
In the meantime, many experts
are pinning their hopes on plans
that encourage people to live
closer to wherever most of their
trips are or that reorganize the
usual patterns of neighbour-
hoods so that people's "living
maps" (where they work, shop
and play) can be smaller.
H OW YO U WO U LD DESCR I B E YO U R WE E KDAY CO M M UTE
very pleasant
moderately pleasant moderately annoying very annoying not sure
DrivE 23% 39% 29% 7% 2%
PUBLiC TransiT 5% 55% 31% 6% 3%
BikE 35% 60% 5% 0% 0%
waLk 63% 33% 2% 0% 2%
BY MODE OF COMMUTE...
VERY
PLEASANT
NOT
SURE
MODERATELY
PLEASANT
MODERATELY
ANNOYING
VERY
ANNOYING
square kilometres covered
by translink service
1,800
ridership
(journeys in 2014)
234 million
population of
the region
2.3 million
kilometres of rail
68
(including the expo,
millennium and canada lines)
plus west coast express with 69 km
CIty oF
VanCouVer
rest oF
Metro
3%
3%
27%
40%
28%
13%
5%
9%
32%
41%
B.C.
8%
6%
23%
39%
24%
W
soUrcE: traNsliNk
