12 ms·

Psychology of ‘no': Vancouver transit vote shows why good decisions are hard

47 points by qiqing 12y ago

marcosdumay 12y ago
Yep, because there's never a downside to tax hikes. Really, it's a fixed tax on every transaction. That alone is enough to destroy some markets, and it grows exponentially with goods transformations at the "service" sector, where companies pay those taxes.
- pkaler 12y ago
  The increase is 35¢ per day for the average person. Literally pennies. Literally. Every single Metro Vancouver mayor, every newspaper (right and left of centre), every organization that matters has endorsed the plan. http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg It's a good plan. It's so obviously a good plan. However, voters are polling that they will vote No. Against their own best interests.
  - wilsynet 12y ago
    An awful lot of Canadians increasingly sound like Republicans.
  - jstalin 12y ago
    Why, when you put it that way, why not just say that it's 1.45¢ per hour! Or just 0.24¢ per minute! Golly, that makes it completely ok now!
  - HelloMcFly 12y ago
    To be fair, it's not "literally pennies" if your unit of analysis is a week, month or year. One could also say for most sums of money that they are "literally pennies" in some sense. I agree with the sentiment though.
steven2012 12y ago
The main reason I would say no is because I don't trust the government to spend the money properly. Politicians have squandered any ability for people to trust them, as far as I'm concerned. There's all these promises of a better tomorrow, but there will be so much waste, so much corruption, that people would rather not tax themselves. What this is a vague promise of better transit, but no real plan, no budget with accountability, etc. Also, unless I missed something the tax is forever. How often have we seen taxes meant for one thing to be diverted to another thing?
- acrooks 12y ago
  It's fair that you don't trust the government to spend money properly, but if the government has no money to spend then this problem is left unsolved. Here is a document outlining the plan and budget: http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...
Canada 12y ago
The steady flow of condescending articles attacking anyone who doesn't want to let the politicians raise taxes now in exchange for something none of them will be in office to deliver doesn't seem to be winning the "Yes" campaign any friends. Maybe their crack team of psychologists could conduct a study and enlighten us...
- mikeash 12y ago
  We'd love to conduct such a study, but we need a small sales tax increase to finance it....
- zzalpha 12y ago
  By this argument, despite all evidence to the contrary, you seem to be claiming no government can achieve anything beyond the cycle of an election horizon. So what would you recommend? Do nothing, ever? I suppose that does have a cool, nihilistic ring to it...
kizz246 12y ago
I think it's important to note that the transit plan won't change regardless of whether we vote yes or not. The same light rail and bridges will be built if we vote no, which will lead to the same results in happiness. If we vote no it's just a matter of whether or not Translink can learn to manage the money that they have now. They have historically been horrible at this.
- toyg 12y ago
  It reminds me of what happened here in Manchester, UK. The population was asked to vote for the introduction of a congestion charge, which would have been used to fund a number of infrastructure improvements. The proposal was soundly (and predictably) defeated, but pretty much all proposed improvements were introduced anyway -- local authorities just found the necessary money in other ways. Where there is a will, there is a way.
- titanomachy 12y ago
  Source? I'm probably going to vote yes, since much of what I buy is PST-exempt anyway (e.g. food, books) and I really believe that our city needs world-class transit. It would be great if we get the transit improvements either way. If that belief is false, though, it's a very dangerous idea to be spreading.
  - kizz246 12y ago
    The plan has been touted in the metro and other papers since I moved to Vancouver 5 years ago. I suppose it depends on how you want to define plan -- as talk from officials with no drafts or as a concrete plan with specs and budgets. If we are using the latter definition it has been since around 2012. I recall when the Canada line was being built for the Olympics there was an outcry because it would push the plans for the rail to Langley(UBC? My memory is not 100%) back by years as they were putting it on hold to make way for rail to Richmond. From 2014: http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo-line-to%E2%80%A6-langley http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo-lin... From 2013: http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html From 2012: http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor-derails-skytrain-expansion-talk/ http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor-derails... From 2008: (When it was just talk) http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-7fa4dbce4f63 http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-...
function_seven 12y ago
This is a terrible attempt to disguise a position piece as some sort of insight into the psychology of voters. It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise. Maybe the "no" voters see it differently? They're probably dubious that "the mayor’s plan will shorten commute times on Vancouver’s most congested roads by 20-30 minutes per day, while transit riders will save up to half an hour." > A report by HDR Consulting found that, even after the sales tax, the average family can expect to save about $360/year. I'm going to bet that HDR Consulting was smart enough to provide the answer their client was looking for. I know I sound cynical here, but this article takes campaign-style promises at face value, then cries, "Why can't they just see what's better for them??"
- pkaler 12y ago
  "It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise." That's because it is a good plan. Every single mayor and a vast majority of councillors are voting YES. http://transit-vote.thetyee.ca/ http://transit-vote.thetyee.ca/ Almost every single organization, left and right of centre, has endorsed the plan: http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg It's a good plan. That's why the piece pre-supposes that point.
  - jstalin 12y ago
    If the politicians are supporting it, then it must be a good plan.
    - BrainInAJar 12y ago
      politicians, businesses, unions, charities, literally everyone across the spectrum, everyone's saying it's a good plan, except the auto-industry backed CTF (where was their outcry when the province was blowing billions of dollars on bridges?) Any plan that can unite that many wildly disparate organizations behind it is likely to be a very good plan.
kazinator 12y ago
No-voting Vancouverite here. Firstly, giving more money to Translink is like giving a credit card to a reckless teenager. Or the keys to a powerful sports car to Justin Bieber. Secondly, transit should support itself from the fares it collects: how about that! I already pay a "regional transit levy" ... in my electricity bill, WTF? Where is the connection between me running a fridge, computer and lights, and someone else taking the bus? I don't give a rat's ass about transit. I bike to work! Okay, so there are bike lanes in this deal for me? Nope; I don't care about those, and they won't build them where I commute. I will fend for myself, thanks. I also don't care about expanding the road infrastructure for motorists. Roads should get slower and more congested, as an incentive for people to get out of their cars. My commute is already short and consistently so. I can beat transit by 100% and even the average car trip time. I've made the 12 km trip to work in as few as 22 minutes; whereas my best car time was around 15, and plenty of times when traffic made that 45 minutes or more. I don't care about a new bridge over the Fraser; just more ways for the violent criminals from there to attack Vancouver homes, businesses and individuals, and then make a faster getaway back over the Fraser, out of law's reach. It's bad enough that a stray bullet can reach across the Fraser. Hey, that last paragraph is a joke, no offense intended! :)
- fleshweasel 12y ago
  Do you also think that if you don't have kids in school, your taxes shouldn't pay for public education?
  - kazinator 12y ago
    No, because having kids in school is not comparable to refusing to get out of your car or bus. If I don't have kids in school, I have not found an alternative way to achieve the same thing as someone who does have kids in school (an alternative that is cheaper, more efficient and easier on the environment). If we don't have kids, humanity vanishes. If we have kids, but they don't go to school, everything will go to hell in a hound basket within the span of a generation.
    - itsybitsycoder 12y ago
patmcc 12y ago
I'm no longer a Vancouver resident, but I know people who are voting no not because they think transit doesn't need the money (it definitely does), but because: 1) Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people. 2) Translink, the company in charge of transit in Vancouver, is widely seen as somewhere between incompetent and corrupt. (Corrupt by Canadian standards, which is a pretty low bar). If this was done as an increase in property and gas taxes, I suspect it'd be a different story.
- refurb 12y ago
  Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people. Aren't there numerous sales tax exemptions that make it less regressive? No sales tax on groceries, school supplies, etc?
  - titanomachy 12y ago
    The PST in British Columbia (which would be raised half a percent) exempts children's clothes, books, bicycles, medications, and most food. Source: http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B17631207A0AD7 http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B1...
  - itsybitsycoder 12y ago
    There are still a lot of necessities that are taxed, like adult clothing, hygiene supplies, etc., and a lot of non-necessities that are exempted. Last I checked, a baggie of corner store candy is not exempt but a $5k wedding cake would be. A wardrobe of designer children's clothing is exempt, but work boots for an adult are not. So they have tried to make it less regressive, but that's hard to do with a sales tax.
nn3 12y ago
TLDR; vote does not go the way a journalist wants it to, so he writes a long piece on how stupid the voters are.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  A gross mischaracterization of the article.
  - jstalin 12y ago
    A spot-on accurate summary of the article.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Hardly. The author of the article enumerated the benefits that could reasonably be expected to accrue to the public on the basis of empirical research. Most of the nay-saying comments in this thread are total BS.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  I don't think the vote happened yet. Your summary is technically correct. But you're implying that it's a petty insult, when he's tackling a real systematic problem in votes about public services. Just because the preaching gets annoying doesn't make him wrong.
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Government spending is too wasteful, by orders of magnitude. I don't blame voters for saying no. Fix that problem first, before spending billions of dollars. In Oregon we recently had a transit proposal to build a new bridge over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. About 30 years ago we spent $170 million for a very fine bridge.[1] Now we were being asked to spend $2800 million[2] for a replacement for a parallel bridge (revised down from $3500 million but surely overruns were guaranteed). I know we had some inflation in the intervening years. But nowhere near that much! According to the govt CPI calculator, $170 in 1982 dollars is $412 in 2015 dollars. But our Oregon "leaders" wanted to spend $2800. Fortunately the Washington legislature killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Brid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  Except that the government is more than happy to spend billions on bridges, in a time when vehicle miles driven is declining rapidly, it's only mass transit that gets put to a vote. After blowing a billion dollars on a north Fraser crossing ( which is nearly empty all the time ) the government proceeded to blow $4 billion on the main highway crossing ( Port Mann ) to bring it to 8 lanes, it's totally empty all the time. And now they're going to blow another $3-6 billion replacing the south Fraser crossing (Massey Tunnel -> bridge)
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    Ouch. That's much worse than in the USA. The Oregon <--> Washington bridge that they wanted to replace is heavily used. It is for I-5, which is the primary North <--> South highway for the west coast.
refurb 12y ago
The cost: half a penny added to the provincial sales tax. I don't understand this quote. The BC sales tax is a percent, right? 7%? How do you add "half a penny"? Is that an extra 0.005%?
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Half a penny per dollar. 7.5%
  - refurb 12y ago
    Why don't they call it that then? Because saying you're increasing the sales tax by 0.5% (almost 10% increase) sounds worse than "it's only half a penny"?
    - titanomachy 12y ago
      Yes, the wording is specifically chosen to make the amount sound smaller. This article argues in favour of the tax, so it makes sense that the author would choose such wording. The total sales tax (provincial + federal) would go from 12% to 12.5%, so you could call it a 4% increase rather than 10%... there's lots of ways to spin numbers :)
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      I feel the opposite way, odd. If you say "percent" I'm unsure if that's based on the existing tax or not. If you say "penny" I know instantly you mean per dollar.
      - refurb 12y ago
        Sure. They couldn't say the sales tax is going up by 0.5%, that would be confusing. But they could say "the sales tax rate is increasing by 0.5% from 12% to 12.5%"
        Dylan16807 12y ago
acrooks 12y ago
I live in Vancouver and will be voting Yes; but I am pretty confident that the No-side will win this battle. The group(s) that have been promoting the No vote seem to be using big numbers and mostly baseless arguments. Statements like "Translink spent $30,000 on a statue of a poodle", "The last CEO made $500,000 a year", "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" are among their key points. It's unfortunate that the general public struggles to think in relative terms, or to be forward thinking. $500k/year is a pretty low CEO salary for that size of organization; $30,000 on public art for an organization with an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion is all of a sudden not so outrageous. "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" is the ultimate irony in it all. The reason this plebiscite exists is because the population is _unhappy_ with the service and they want to make it better. Of all of the large Canadian transit systems I've used - Calgary, Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto - Vancouver's is without a doubt the best and most efficient of them all, and Translink has developed a very good plan for what they would do if the Yes side prevailed. Oh well. (the proposed transit plan given a successful Yes vote: http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...)
- rozap 12y ago
  Also from Vancouver, but will not be voting because I'm not a citizen. I'd be on the fence about this decision. Not because of the statue or the CEO salary; you're right, in the grand scheme of things they aren't very important and are absolutely used by the "no" campaign to cause a knee jerk reaction in voters. The more troubling thing about Translink is their apparent inability to execute even the simplest of projects. Remember the Compass cards? Still not in effect. Similarly, turnstiles in the skytrain still don't work, so many people don't pay. Building new rail service and adding more bus routes seems orders of magnitude more complex than implementing a check in/check out card system or enabling turnstiles in the skytrain stations. If they fail to execute simple tasks at the cost of hundreds of millions, why would they be able to execute complex tasks at the cost of billions? This in addition to the fact that sales taxes are the most regressive taxes you can have. Why not property tax? Only extremely wealthy people can afford property in Vancouver. Seems like a better place to start... Like I said, I have no skin in this game. Just trying to shed some light on some of the more salient points from the No side.
moonshinefe 12y ago
I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for transit if they actually believed the promises would be delivered. Translink is notoriously incompetent and wasteful. For instance, their "Compass" system, despite being pegged for deployment by 2008, STILL hasn't been fully implemented. It's been plagued by technical issues and is now running over $200 MILLION dollars, far higher than the original cost. All to stop non-paying passengers (they'll be losing more money on the compass system than missed ticket payments). Not to mention many of the "transit police" they increasingly employ have 6 figure salaries. They're basically security guards who call the cops if anything serious happens. I've seen them maybe checking tickets 3x a year max in all my years riding Translink. So yeah, if Translink wasn't already blowing millions of dollars when it shouldn't have, I think Vancouver would vote yes. As it stands, they're justified in saying no, in my humble opinion. Sources: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-program-delayed-again-by-translink-1.2701045 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-salaries-too-high-taxpayer-group-says-1.1316199 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-sal...
- kazinator 12y ago
  > I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for transit ... By the way, the money-losing Golden Ears Bridge shows that Vancouverites (or "Lower-Mainland-ites", rather) are willing to drive an extra 40 minutes to avoid paying a small toll. The project didn't see that one coming, haha!
fraserharris 12y ago
This is a great example of effective marketing. The No side has worked for a number of years to portray Translink, the transit operating company in Vancouver, as incompetent and wasteful. They've turned this referendum on funding a group of capital projects into a referendum on the operating company. By most metrics (trips per capita, on time performance, farebox recovery) Vancouver has one of the top transit systems in North America.
YZF 12y ago
I live in greater Vancouver and I take public transport almost every day. I am almost certainly going to vote NO. Translink just threw $200M down the drain on the Compass program ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29 ). If/when this ever comes into effect it will increase my transit costs (vs. the 10 book tickets I can buy now). It will almost certainly increase my travel time due to lineups. My kids who home school will not be able to get a student's fare any more. Causal riders will avoid public transport because they need to give Translink $12 just for the privilege of a single bus ride (card + minimum "fill"). It will almost certainly increase Translink's expenses in maintaining this system. I'm not happy with their choices. Public transport in greater Vancouver sucks big time (perhaps except within the city proper.) I used to have a commute of 25 minutes to work by car/motorcycle. Taking public transport would have made that over 2 hours. Most transport lines go from somewhere to downtown. If you need to go "across" and are outside the center good luck. If I miss my "express" bus in the morning (because it came 10 minutes early, which happens) then I have to walk 1km and wait 20 minutes for the slow bus that takes 20 minutes longer. If I come early, well, the bus can also be 10 minutes late... I understand they have a larger/less densely populated area to cover but they do not seem to be creative enough in doing that. The SkyTrain is just about the most expensive way of doing transport per km. I'm not sure other options were considered (e.g. there are de-comissioned train tracks running through Vancouver). Public transport is also quite expensive compared to anywhere else I've taken public transport. Dropping prices would help increase ridership which might help fix some of the other issues. Fares that were raised when energy prices came up didn't come down once energy prices declined. This plan itself was made at a time when energy prices were higher and it seems they're not going back to the same levels any time soon. At the same time, Vancouver is pretty much the most expensive place in North America to get gas. Supposedly that tax money should have gone towards improving public transport. Once taxes are increased that money can go anywhere. There's no "contract". There's no accountability. There are also a lot of improvements that could be made without getting into big ticket items. Optimizing the existing system towards public transport. I view the tax increase as throwing good money after bad money something I try not do to in my personal finance and I don't want the province to engage in this in their finance.
- 12y ago

47 points by qiqing 12y ago

Yep, because there's never a downside to tax hikes. Really, it's a fixed tax on every transaction. That alone is enough to destroy some markets, and it grows exponentially with goods transformations at the "service" sector, where companies pay those taxes.

pkaler 12y ago
The increase is 35¢ per day for the average person. Literally pennies. Literally. Every single Metro Vancouver mayor, every newspaper (right and left of centre), every organization that matters has endorsed the plan. http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg It's a good plan. It's so obviously a good plan. However, voters are polling that they will vote No. Against their own best interests.
- wilsynet 12y ago
  An awful lot of Canadians increasingly sound like Republicans.
- jstalin 12y ago
  Why, when you put it that way, why not just say that it's 1.45¢ per hour! Or just 0.24¢ per minute! Golly, that makes it completely ok now!
- HelloMcFly 12y ago
  To be fair, it's not "literally pennies" if your unit of analysis is a week, month or year. One could also say for most sums of money that they are "literally pennies" in some sense. I agree with the sentiment though.

steven2012 12y ago

The main reason I would say no is because I don't trust the government to spend the money properly. Politicians have squandered any ability for people to trust them, as far as I'm concerned. There's all these promises of a better tomorrow, but there will be so much waste, so much corruption, that people would rather not tax themselves. What this is a vague promise of better transit, but no real plan, no budget with accountability, etc. Also, unless I missed something the tax is forever. How often have we seen taxes meant for one thing to be diverted to another thing?

acrooks 12y ago
It's fair that you don't trust the government to spend money properly, but if the government has no money to spend then this problem is left unsolved. Here is a document outlining the plan and budget: http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...

Canada 12y ago

The steady flow of condescending articles attacking anyone who doesn't want to let the politicians raise taxes now in exchange for something none of them will be in office to deliver doesn't seem to be winning the "Yes" campaign any friends. Maybe their crack team of psychologists could conduct a study and enlighten us...

mikeash 12y ago
We'd love to conduct such a study, but we need a small sales tax increase to finance it....
zzalpha 12y ago
By this argument, despite all evidence to the contrary, you seem to be claiming no government can achieve anything beyond the cycle of an election horizon. So what would you recommend? Do nothing, ever? I suppose that does have a cool, nihilistic ring to it...

kizz246 12y ago

I think it's important to note that the transit plan won't change regardless of whether we vote yes or not. The same light rail and bridges will be built if we vote no, which will lead to the same results in happiness. If we vote no it's just a matter of whether or not Translink can learn to manage the money that they have now. They have historically been horrible at this.

toyg 12y ago
It reminds me of what happened here in Manchester, UK. The population was asked to vote for the introduction of a congestion charge, which would have been used to fund a number of infrastructure improvements. The proposal was soundly (and predictably) defeated, but pretty much all proposed improvements were introduced anyway -- local authorities just found the necessary money in other ways. Where there is a will, there is a way.
titanomachy 12y ago
Source? I'm probably going to vote yes, since much of what I buy is PST-exempt anyway (e.g. food, books) and I really believe that our city needs world-class transit. It would be great if we get the transit improvements either way. If that belief is false, though, it's a very dangerous idea to be spreading.
- kizz246 12y ago
  The plan has been touted in the metro and other papers since I moved to Vancouver 5 years ago. I suppose it depends on how you want to define plan -- as talk from officials with no drafts or as a concrete plan with specs and budgets. If we are using the latter definition it has been since around 2012. I recall when the Canada line was being built for the Olympics there was an outcry because it would push the plans for the rail to Langley(UBC? My memory is not 100%) back by years as they were putting it on hold to make way for rail to Richmond. From 2014: http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo-line-to%E2%80%A6-langley http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo-lin... From 2013: http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html From 2012: http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor-derails-skytrain-expansion-talk/ http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor-derails... From 2008: (When it was just talk) http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-7fa4dbce4f63 http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-...

function_seven 12y ago

This is a terrible attempt to disguise a position piece as some sort of insight into the psychology of voters. It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise. Maybe the "no" voters see it differently? They're probably dubious that "the mayor’s plan will shorten commute times on Vancouver’s most congested roads by 20-30 minutes per day, while transit riders will save up to half an hour." > A report by HDR Consulting found that, even after the sales tax, the average family can expect to save about $360/year. I'm going to bet that HDR Consulting was smart enough to provide the answer their client was looking for. I know I sound cynical here, but this article takes campaign-style promises at face value, then cries, "Why can't they just see what's better for them??"

pkaler 12y ago
"It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise." That's because it is a good plan. Every single mayor and a vast majority of councillors are voting YES. http://transit-vote.thetyee.ca/ http://transit-vote.thetyee.ca/ Almost every single organization, left and right of centre, has endorsed the plan: http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg It's a good plan. That's why the piece pre-supposes that point.
- jstalin 12y ago
  If the politicians are supporting it, then it must be a good plan.
  - BrainInAJar 12y ago
    politicians, businesses, unions, charities, literally everyone across the spectrum, everyone's saying it's a good plan, except the auto-industry backed CTF (where was their outcry when the province was blowing billions of dollars on bridges?) Any plan that can unite that many wildly disparate organizations behind it is likely to be a very good plan.

kazinator 12y ago

No-voting Vancouverite here. Firstly, giving more money to Translink is like giving a credit card to a reckless teenager. Or the keys to a powerful sports car to Justin Bieber. Secondly, transit should support itself from the fares it collects: how about that! I already pay a "regional transit levy" ... in my electricity bill, WTF? Where is the connection between me running a fridge, computer and lights, and someone else taking the bus? I don't give a rat's ass about transit. I bike to work! Okay, so there are bike lanes in this deal for me? Nope; I don't care about those, and they won't build them where I commute. I will fend for myself, thanks. I also don't care about expanding the road infrastructure for motorists. Roads should get slower and more congested, as an incentive for people to get out of their cars. My commute is already short and consistently so. I can beat transit by 100% and even the average car trip time. I've made the 12 km trip to work in as few as 22 minutes; whereas my best car time was around 15, and plenty of times when traffic made that 45 minutes or more. I don't care about a new bridge over the Fraser; just more ways for the violent criminals from there to attack Vancouver homes, businesses and individuals, and then make a faster getaway back over the Fraser, out of law's reach. It's bad enough that a stray bullet can reach across the Fraser. Hey, that last paragraph is a joke, no offense intended! :)

fleshweasel 12y ago
Do you also think that if you don't have kids in school, your taxes shouldn't pay for public education?
- kazinator 12y ago
  No, because having kids in school is not comparable to refusing to get out of your car or bus. If I don't have kids in school, I have not found an alternative way to achieve the same thing as someone who does have kids in school (an alternative that is cheaper, more efficient and easier on the environment). If we don't have kids, humanity vanishes. If we have kids, but they don't go to school, everything will go to hell in a hound basket within the span of a generation.
  - itsybitsycoder 12y ago

patmcc 12y ago

I'm no longer a Vancouver resident, but I know people who are voting no not because they think transit doesn't need the money (it definitely does), but because: 1) Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people. 2) Translink, the company in charge of transit in Vancouver, is widely seen as somewhere between incompetent and corrupt. (Corrupt by Canadian standards, which is a pretty low bar). If this was done as an increase in property and gas taxes, I suspect it'd be a different story.

refurb 12y ago
Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people. Aren't there numerous sales tax exemptions that make it less regressive? No sales tax on groceries, school supplies, etc?
- titanomachy 12y ago
  The PST in British Columbia (which would be raised half a percent) exempts children's clothes, books, bicycles, medications, and most food. Source: http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B17631207A0AD7 http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B1...
- itsybitsycoder 12y ago
  There are still a lot of necessities that are taxed, like adult clothing, hygiene supplies, etc., and a lot of non-necessities that are exempted. Last I checked, a baggie of corner store candy is not exempt but a $5k wedding cake would be. A wardrobe of designer children's clothing is exempt, but work boots for an adult are not. So they have tried to make it less regressive, but that's hard to do with a sales tax.

nn3 12y ago

TLDR; vote does not go the way a journalist wants it to, so he writes a long piece on how stupid the voters are.

anigbrowl 12y ago
A gross mischaracterization of the article.
- jstalin 12y ago
  A spot-on accurate summary of the article.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Hardly. The author of the article enumerated the benefits that could reasonably be expected to accrue to the public on the basis of empirical research. Most of the nay-saying comments in this thread are total BS.
Dylan16807 12y ago
I don't think the vote happened yet. Your summary is technically correct. But you're implying that it's a petty insult, when he's tackling a real systematic problem in votes about public services. Just because the preaching gets annoying doesn't make him wrong.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

Government spending is too wasteful, by orders of magnitude. I don't blame voters for saying no. Fix that problem first, before spending billions of dollars. In Oregon we recently had a transit proposal to build a new bridge over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. About 30 years ago we spent $170 million for a very fine bridge.[1] Now we were being asked to spend $2800 million[2] for a replacement for a parallel bridge (revised down from $3500 million but surely overruns were guaranteed). I know we had some inflation in the intervening years. But nowhere near that much! According to the govt CPI calculator, $170 in 1982 dollars is $412 in 2015 dollars. But our Oregon "leaders" wanted to spend $2800. Fortunately the Washington legislature killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Brid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing

BrainInAJar 12y ago
Except that the government is more than happy to spend billions on bridges, in a time when vehicle miles driven is declining rapidly, it's only mass transit that gets put to a vote. After blowing a billion dollars on a north Fraser crossing ( which is nearly empty all the time ) the government proceeded to blow $4 billion on the main highway crossing ( Port Mann ) to bring it to 8 lanes, it's totally empty all the time. And now they're going to blow another $3-6 billion replacing the south Fraser crossing (Massey Tunnel -> bridge)
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  Ouch. That's much worse than in the USA. The Oregon <--> Washington bridge that they wanted to replace is heavily used. It is for I-5, which is the primary North <--> South highway for the west coast.

refurb 12y ago

The cost: half a penny added to the provincial sales tax. I don't understand this quote. The BC sales tax is a percent, right? 7%? How do you add "half a penny"? Is that an extra 0.005%?

Dylan16807 12y ago
Half a penny per dollar. 7.5%
- refurb 12y ago
  Why don't they call it that then? Because saying you're increasing the sales tax by 0.5% (almost 10% increase) sounds worse than "it's only half a penny"?
  - titanomachy 12y ago
    Yes, the wording is specifically chosen to make the amount sound smaller. This article argues in favour of the tax, so it makes sense that the author would choose such wording. The total sales tax (provincial + federal) would go from 12% to 12.5%, so you could call it a 4% increase rather than 10%... there's lots of ways to spin numbers :)
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    I feel the opposite way, odd. If you say "percent" I'm unsure if that's based on the existing tax or not. If you say "penny" I know instantly you mean per dollar.
    - refurb 12y ago
      Sure. They couldn't say the sales tax is going up by 0.5%, that would be confusing. But they could say "the sales tax rate is increasing by 0.5% from 12% to 12.5%"
      - Dylan16807 12y ago

acrooks 12y ago

I live in Vancouver and will be voting Yes; but I am pretty confident that the No-side will win this battle. The group(s) that have been promoting the No vote seem to be using big numbers and mostly baseless arguments. Statements like "Translink spent $30,000 on a statue of a poodle", "The last CEO made $500,000 a year", "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" are among their key points. It's unfortunate that the general public struggles to think in relative terms, or to be forward thinking. $500k/year is a pretty low CEO salary for that size of organization; $30,000 on public art for an organization with an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion is all of a sudden not so outrageous. "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" is the ultimate irony in it all. The reason this plebiscite exists is because the population is _unhappy_ with the service and they want to make it better. Of all of the large Canadian transit systems I've used - Calgary, Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto - Vancouver's is without a doubt the best and most efficient of them all, and Translink has developed a very good plan for what they would do if the Yes side prevailed. Oh well. (the proposed transit plan given a successful Yes vote: http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...)

rozap 12y ago
Also from Vancouver, but will not be voting because I'm not a citizen. I'd be on the fence about this decision. Not because of the statue or the CEO salary; you're right, in the grand scheme of things they aren't very important and are absolutely used by the "no" campaign to cause a knee jerk reaction in voters. The more troubling thing about Translink is their apparent inability to execute even the simplest of projects. Remember the Compass cards? Still not in effect. Similarly, turnstiles in the skytrain still don't work, so many people don't pay. Building new rail service and adding more bus routes seems orders of magnitude more complex than implementing a check in/check out card system or enabling turnstiles in the skytrain stations. If they fail to execute simple tasks at the cost of hundreds of millions, why would they be able to execute complex tasks at the cost of billions? This in addition to the fact that sales taxes are the most regressive taxes you can have. Why not property tax? Only extremely wealthy people can afford property in Vancouver. Seems like a better place to start... Like I said, I have no skin in this game. Just trying to shed some light on some of the more salient points from the No side.

moonshinefe 12y ago

I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for transit if they actually believed the promises would be delivered. Translink is notoriously incompetent and wasteful. For instance, their "Compass" system, despite being pegged for deployment by 2008, STILL hasn't been fully implemented. It's been plagued by technical issues and is now running over $200 MILLION dollars, far higher than the original cost. All to stop non-paying passengers (they'll be losing more money on the compass system than missed ticket payments). Not to mention many of the "transit police" they increasingly employ have 6 figure salaries. They're basically security guards who call the cops if anything serious happens. I've seen them maybe checking tickets 3x a year max in all my years riding Translink. So yeah, if Translink wasn't already blowing millions of dollars when it shouldn't have, I think Vancouver would vote yes. As it stands, they're justified in saying no, in my humble opinion. Sources: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-program-delayed-again-by-translink-1.2701045 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-salaries-too-high-taxpayer-group-says-1.1316199 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-sal...

kazinator 12y ago
> I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for transit ... By the way, the money-losing Golden Ears Bridge shows that Vancouverites (or "Lower-Mainland-ites", rather) are willing to drive an extra 40 minutes to avoid paying a small toll. The project didn't see that one coming, haha!

fraserharris 12y ago

This is a great example of effective marketing. The No side has worked for a number of years to portray Translink, the transit operating company in Vancouver, as incompetent and wasteful. They've turned this referendum on funding a group of capital projects into a referendum on the operating company. By most metrics (trips per capita, on time performance, farebox recovery) Vancouver has one of the top transit systems in North America.

YZF 12y ago

I live in greater Vancouver and I take public transport almost every day. I am almost certainly going to vote NO. Translink just threw $200M down the drain on the Compass program ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29 ). If/when this ever comes into effect it will increase my transit costs (vs. the 10 book tickets I can buy now). It will almost certainly increase my travel time due to lineups. My kids who home school will not be able to get a student's fare any more. Causal riders will avoid public transport because they need to give Translink $12 just for the privilege of a single bus ride (card + minimum "fill"). It will almost certainly increase Translink's expenses in maintaining this system. I'm not happy with their choices. Public transport in greater Vancouver sucks big time (perhaps except within the city proper.) I used to have a commute of 25 minutes to work by car/motorcycle. Taking public transport would have made that over 2 hours. Most transport lines go from somewhere to downtown. If you need to go "across" and are outside the center good luck. If I miss my "express" bus in the morning (because it came 10 minutes early, which happens) then I have to walk 1km and wait 20 minutes for the slow bus that takes 20 minutes longer. If I come early, well, the bus can also be 10 minutes late... I understand they have a larger/less densely populated area to cover but they do not seem to be creative enough in doing that. The SkyTrain is just about the most expensive way of doing transport per km. I'm not sure other options were considered (e.g. there are de-comissioned train tracks running through Vancouver). Public transport is also quite expensive compared to anywhere else I've taken public transport. Dropping prices would help increase ridership which might help fix some of the other issues. Fares that were raised when energy prices came up didn't come down once energy prices declined. This plan itself was made at a time when energy prices were higher and it seems they're not going back to the same levels any time soon. At the same time, Vancouver is pretty much the most expensive place in North America to get gas. Supposedly that tax money should have gone towards improving public transport. Once taxes are increased that money can go anywhere. There's no "contract". There's no accountability. There are also a lot of improvements that could be made without getting into big ticket items. Optimizing the existing system towards public transport. I view the tax increase as throwing good money after bad money something I try not do to in my personal finance and I don't want the province to engage in this in their finance.

12y ago