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TransLink's bloated bureaucracy showing

Editor: It seems TransLink is busying itself with the Broadway corridor and one must ask, why?

TransLink can’t even source $400 million to complete the funding for the never-to-be-built Evergreen SkyTrain line Why then waste time planning for transit options on Broadway when those plans will be stale-dated long before there is any funding for transit improvements on that route?

Transit planning is good for about five years and we build a metro line route every decade. By the time the Broadway project comes around, any planning done now will have to be redone.

What’s TransLink’s game?

The most likely answer is that TransLink’s ponderous bureaucracy must look like it’s actually doing something, lest politicians start asking uncomfortable questions about too many employees, etc.

There is no money for a subway under Broadway and TransLink continues to inflate light rail’s construction costs to the absurd, means nothing will be done to improve transit on Broadway for decades to come.

Politicians south of the Fraser should take note. Instead of planning for viable planning solutions for Greater Vancouver and South of the Fraser, TransLink continues its flim-flam planning for Vancouver.

Politicians should ask themselves — “Would not a South Fraser Transit Authority do a better job in providing a viable transit system?”

Sadly, TransLink’s planners are little more than bookworms in the library, hiding their ineptitude with dated precedents. They have made the planning process a giant machine, where an ossified central bureaucracy reigns amid mountains of paper, with a result being an expensive and dysfunctional transit system, where despite ever-increasing taxes, there is little improvement to the actual transit system.

Is it time to say adiós to TransLink?

Malcolm Johnston,

Delta