Editor: Congratulations to the 62 per cent who voted “No” on the transit plebiscite.
Despite an un-level playing field, the electorate has sent a clear message to government.
If Christy Clark has any urge to ignore the results and push an increase through anyway, she should remember that she could not even get elected in her own riding during the last provincial election.
In fact, most of the mayors’ group should now be looking for other work. Never has there been a more blatant display of arrogance and disdain for the voters who elected them and who pay their salaries — promoting their own agenda and paying with taxpayer dollars. Being elected means working for the people’s agenda.
That we can use an improved transit system is not in question, but changing how government operates is.
Two main issues need to be resolved before a new transit program is created.
First, the province has already tapped out the taxpayer — tax increases from numerous sources such as reduced income tax exemption, hydro rates after new meter installation, auto insurance, ferry rates, bridge tolls, medical premiums and more, are far above the inflation rate.
In fact, these taxes are not included in the inflation rate and so increases to our costs of living are wildly distorted.
And what are they doing with all the extra money, anyway?
Second, traffic is not congested, it is saturated and it is as much engineered as it is over-peopled.
Consider the following: Creating bike lanes at the expense of vehicles (bike lanes should be elevated or out of the way instead of robbing road space), eliminating right-hand turns and increasing intersection light intervals for many blocks to accommodate bikes, buses stopping in moving lanes instead of pull-outs, shutting down “fast” lanes during morning rush for centre median gardening or street sweeping (the rest of the world works on a 24-hour clock, so why not gardening?), permanent road closures, underused HOV lanes, over-installation of speed bumps and traffic circles, still building two-lane roads and bridges knowing that a million people are on the way and desynchronized traffic lights.
And now they want to build road-level light rail and eliminate the Georgia Viaduct.
As a former host of the 1986 Transportation Expo to showcase the world, maybe now is the time to bring back the rickshaw.
Maybe transit and token fire dousing is not the real problem, because there is still a 38 per cent minority that wants to give government more and more control in spite of achieving results that would bankrupt any private organization. The term is called plutocracy (I wonder if that has anything to do with Pluto being way out there).
Donald Trump has it right: “Why are we allowing government to do this?”
Richard Keill,
Langley