Metro taxpayers foot bill for transit passes access, Metro

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Metro taxpayers foot bill for transit passes
Burnaby Mountain residents get a free ride on transit after deal to boost ridership



Metro Vancouver taxpayers have been subsidizing transit for hundreds of Burnaby Mountain residents since 2008 through a “community transit pass” that gives them unlimited access to the region’s buses and trains for just $30 a month.

And even though TransLink plans to raise the fares for the nearly 900 resident pass-holders this fall, they will still pay significantly less than those living off the mountain for a regular three-zone fare.

The pass was initiated in 2006 through a pilot project between Vancity Trust, TransLink and the Simon Fraser University Community Trust to boost transit ridership and green development on the UniverCity lands.

Similar to a student U-Pass, residents can access unlimited travel across the region for slightly less than $30 a month — a 75-per-cent discount on a three-zone monthly fare card.

It’s the only program of its kind in Metro Vancouver, which is facing overcrowded buses and transit disparities across the region because TransLink doesn’t have the money to add services.

But TransLink justifies the move by saying Burnaby Mountain is fairly isolated and the cheap fares have helped to fill otherwise empty buses going up and down the mountain after dropping off and collecting students at Simon Fraser.

“It’s based on the fact you’re using capacity that otherwise would be going to waste,” TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said. “We have a situation of a destination where people flock to it but the resident population wants to get back out.

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“The only other corridor where there was a good two-way flow was the Canada Line and that’s why it was built.”

Hardie wouldn’t say how much TransLink has spent to subsidize the program, saying he would have to look back to 2004 to get the numbers.

But while TransLink and the SFU Community Trust have co-subsidized the pass program since 2008, it now appears the transportation authority is wholly responsible for the cost because the trust says it can no longer “financially subsidize” the pass and will only administer it.

Gordon Harris, the trust’s president and chief executive officer, said the university trust had provided about $5,000 a month to the pass program, as its “contribution to community building.”

But he argued the intent of the pass was to build a culture around transit use and now that’s been done, the trust is looking at other ways to invest its money, such as a gondola to ferry students and residents up the mountain. The gondola is among TransLink’s priorities for the region, behind the Evergreen Line linking Burnaby and Coquitlam, rapid transit lines in Surrey and on the Broadway corridor to the University of B.C.

Harris said a gondola would take some of the diesel buses off the road and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He noted about 40 per cent of the mountain’s 3,000 residents now use transit on a regular basis, while 10 per cent don’t even own cars, so there is demand for transit.

“We just think it’s a remarkably successful program for us. We clearly and easily proved to them they don’t need a car,” Harris said. “We’re proud of that because it means the experiment worked.”

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He said the trust, which oversees the continued development of UniverCity with an aim to fund endowments for teaching and research at the university, will also continue to ask developers to provide a one-year community pass to residents of all new projects on the mountain.

Longtime Burnaby Mountain resident Bruce Clayman, who helped design the community transit pass, agreed it has been a benefit to residents. He said he’s disappointed the trust is no longer subsidizing it, and that the fares will go up.

The TransLink board of directors — headed by Nancy Olewiler, a professor in SFU’s department of economics — will this month consider raising the community transit fare to $46.50 per month on Sept. 1. That’s the same as a monthly concession pass for children, students and seniors. Next April, the price would rise to $81, the same as a one-zone monthly fare, but residents would still get unlimited travel with the pass. By comparison, a two-zone fare card that would cover, for example, Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond and the North Shore, is $110 per month.

Clayman said the pass was used as an incentive to get people to move to the mountain and the trust is “changing the ground rules part way


Longtime Burnaby Mountain resident Bruce Clayman helped design the community transit pass. He's disappointed the pass will no longer be funded and fares will go up.