Editor: TransLink recently admitted that approximately 2.7 million riders did not pay the applicable bus fares last year. My 10-cent calculator shows that works out to about 7,400 unpaid fares a day.
And yet Mayor Greg Moore of Port Coquitlam states on TV that he finds this falls into acceptable levels, compared to other cities.
I say to Moore — we don’t live in other cities, we live here. This loss of revenue has to be considered totally unacceptable. And then you want us to vote for a 0.5 per cent increase in the provincial sales tax.
Considering an average fare of say $3 times 7,500 unpaid fares per day, that works out to $22,500 per day, 365 days per year. That is $8,212,500 worth of unpaid fares a year.
Two things come to mind — $8 million dollars is a lot of money and if there are, in fact, more than 2.7 million unpaid fares, why would anyone pay? There is no penalty for non-payment.
It’s time TransLink started collecting this unpaid revenue. Running a transportation company is not a hobby, it is there to provide a service, a service that should be paid for by all travellers.
Joe Schiller,
Langley