In 2010, Transit Police failed to investigate 43% of all transit-related violent crime; 33% of all transit-related property crime; 8% of all transit-related drug offences, and 28% of all other transit-related crime. That work was left to jurisdictional police.
SkyTrain used the same power source to run trains, power operations and power all communications (emails, public address, phones and radios) – but didn’t have any redundancy in the system. So when the power went down, everything did.
TransLink and Pitt Meadows fought over whose fault it was that a trail attached to the Golden Ears Bridge project caused significant flooding in neighbours’ yards. TransLink spent $50,000 to try and fix the problem. “We are not satisfied with the workmanship… you’ve got to fix it,” said one city councillor. “Our taxpayers should not be financially responsible.”
During the July 17, 2014, shutdown, SkyTrain control didn’t know the trains had stopped running until the public started tweeting them.
In 2013, significant SkyTrain delays increased by 20 per cent, and the average delay time of these events grew by 10 per cent.
As concrete chunks fall from the 80-year-old Pattullo Bridge, TransLink did what it does best: slap a band-aid on the problem. This time, it was a $1.6 million net to catch the falling cement.
Transit Police spent $5,000 on a flawed report trying to justify their existence in a post-fare gate world, but the study failed to include any comparisons to any system that had decades of free flow entrance before moving to fare gates.
TransLink itself had 141 employees making $100,000 or more in 2012, but it also had another 252 six-figure incomes buried in its subsidiaries. That’s a total of 393 $100,000+ employees, plus whatever the staff at InTransitBC and the Golden Ears Crossing are making. “There's no perspective and no accountability - and the reality is until there is a demand, a loud demand, from the public to stop this, things aren't going to change,” said Derek Corrigan.
Compared with four other Canadian transit systems, TransLink had the poorest cost effectiveness, with an operating cost per revenue passenger of $3.92 in 2010. This was a third higher than the average of the other systems ($2.94).
TransLink isn’t falling behind, according to its independent commissioner. It’s correcting to a sustainable level of service: “The concern that the system is falling behind urban growth should be kept in perspective. During a long and financially unsustainable surge prior to 2009, transit service expanded faster than population. In both absolute and per-capita terms, the supply of transit service is still relatively high.”