Parents worry TransLink changes will hurt working families

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      On January 1, 2014, TransLink will no longer allow all immediate family members ride the transit system on Sundays and holidays on a person's monthly pass.

      That cut was announced on July 30 alongside a number of other money-saving moves that TransLink says will make the Lower Mainland’s public-transit system “more equitable”.

      The Employer Pass Program is also being discontinued at the beginning of next year. It offers a 15-percent discount to workers who make a 12-month commitment to buy monthly passes. Similarly, FareSaver booklets are going away. These packs of 10 tickets are sold at an average 20-percent discount compared to cash fares.

      Replacing current forms of payment for TransLink services is the so-called Compass system—cards that require preloading for riders to “tap” in and out of TransLink fare-paid zones. The cards will cost a $6 deposit and offer a 14-percent discount. Cash payments will still be accepted, but will not provide transfers from buses to SkyTrain or SeaBus services.

      TransLink maintains that these changes, revealed this summer, will create a system that’s more efficient and convenient. But parents and community groups are expressing alarm about measures they worry will hurt low-income families.

      Sally Marques is a lifelong transit rider who told the Straight she uses TransLink for everything from shopping for groceries to trips with her three-year-old daughter to Stanley Park.

      “I feel like TransLink, as a company, has slowly been revealing its true colours,” she said in a telephone interview. “They are supposed to be a public service and a company that works for the public, but they have slowly been stripping away every piece of TransLink that was a little bit human.”

      Marques added that her family will also miss free travel on Sundays. “It was something that had a little bit of heart to it. We’d plan to do something on a Sunday that we wouldn’t otherwise do because we knew that we had that.”

      Marques met another mom in a similar situation through South Vancouver Family Place, a community network that supports parents and children five and under. Family Place distributes FareSaver tickets to members who can’t afford public transit to activities it hosts. (Groups that do the same include the YWCA, Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, and Jewish Family Services Agency [JFSA], to name a few.)

      With FareSaver tickets about to disappear, one of the parents said she’s worried she won’t be able to continue attending those events. “TransLink is taking away every discount possible,” she said. “It means I doubt I’ll be able to go to the Family Place any longer because they won’t be able to give me FareSavers, and that was my only way to go.”

      Marques said she’s heard the same concern from other low-income parents.

      In a telephone interview, Susan Alexman, associate executive director of the JFSA, told the Straight that TransLink benefits reductions and the introduction of the Compass card will “complicate” social programs already stretched thin.

      “It’s incredible how quickly it adds up,” Alexman said. “This is all having an impact. Unfortunately, for low-income families, an outing at the park is usually something that they can do and look forward to because it doesn’t cost a lot of money. But this will really impact families that can’t take advantage of what the city has to offer.”

      Several parents interviewed by the Straight noted that benefits cuts have come as TransLink gave senior executives pay increases.

      In 2012, TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis was paid $394,730 and COO Doug Kelsey earned $336,729, according to the transportation authority’s most recent financial statement. Seven other executives collected more than $200,000 in annual compensation. Fifty-eight of the 166 constables with TransLink’s police force earned more than $100,000 that year.

      Last year, TransLink generated $1.42 billion in revenue and reported $1.43 billion in expenditures, according to the organization’s 2012 annual report.

      As the mayor of Burnaby, Derek Corrigan represents a lot of citizens who travel to Vancouver for big family attractions like Science World and the Vancouver Aquarium. He told the Straight that when you take things away from people who are already vulnerable, “people’s lives are damaged.”

      “Families are particularly suffering as a result of some of these cuts and fare increases,” Corrigan said in a telephone interview. “While those fare increases may seem minimal to people who have a higher income or people who are driving their cars to work, for parents who are living under or at the poverty line, these changes are creating a great difference in their ability to provide for their families.”

      Corrigan argued that the core of the problem is TransLink’s corporate structure and its board of directors’ independence from an elected government body.

      “You can see that the attitude is one that doesn’t any longer reflect public policy,” he said. “It mainly reflects the economic strategy of the organization, the bottom line.”

      Retired politician Bob Williams has kept a close eye on public transit in Vancouver for more than four decades.

      “Way back when I was a deputy minister when Glen Clark was premier, I tried to talk him into an expanding free-transit program,” Williams told the Straight. He said that he’s still convinced that’s the best way to go and that it’s not as far-fetched an idea as people might think.

      Williams noted that over the past few decades, land values throughout Metro Vancouver have skyrocketed, perhaps nowhere more so than where public-transit projects like the Canada Line have led the way for development.

      “In the end, it could be a simple land tax that funds transit,” Williams continued. “But here you’re doing in the orphans and widows and all the poor folks out there that really need the system in order to just have a life. Meanwhile, the real wealth is right under your nose; you’re walking over it every day.”

      Chantelle Krish, an advocate for YWCA Metro Vancouver, told the Straight that transit-service changes initially had staff worried but that she believes TransLink is responding to people’s concerns.

      “We’ve connected with TransLink and we’ve had some great discussions,” she said. Krish explained that although the details are still being worked out, it’s her understanding TransLink is planning to sell single-use Compass tickets to community groups, which can then distribute them to people in need, much as they distribute FareSaver tickets today.

      TransLink’s vice president of enterprise initiatives defended the Compass card and argued that programs like free Sundays for monthly pass holders’ families were never intended to be permanent.

      “We’re not raising prices, we’re just ending some discount programs,” Michael Madill told the Straight. For example, he explained, the free-Sundays program was introduced as a means to lure back disgruntled customers after a four-month transit strike in 2001. “Today, we have ridership at record levels and are really at a state where that program has served its purpose and so we need to move forward.”

      On the elimination of FareSaver tickets, Madill claimed that TransLink has heard the concerns of social-service providers. “We know that there are community groups out there that have been buying books of FareSavers and providing them to their clients for single rides,” he said. “For those organizations, we are going to make available bulk-sale Compass tickets.”

      According to Madill, packages of 50 single-use tickets will be available for those organizations to purchase at a discounted price comparable to that of other Compass tickets.

      One of the moms said that regardless of how the Compass cards work, they won’t give her family its Sundays back.

      “We go swimming on Sundays, when we can, or we go to Stanley Park,” she said. “Those sorts of things that don’t cost too much that we can bus to, those are the things that we’ll be missing out on.”

      You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.

      Comments

      18 Comments

      Revenue is needed

      Sep 4, 2013 at 10:53am

      I really feel for those families. The problem is with increased MPG in a our cars gas tax revenues are decreasing. This is leading to a deficit unless we can get an another revenue source like road pricing. Its a shame the upcoming referendum will lose and translink will have to shoulder all the blame and raise prices even more.

      Michael

      Sep 4, 2013 at 1:05pm

      Gregor's terms in the Vancouver is all about ramping p the classwar, enabling wealthy plundering of Vancouver's resources on the backs of the poor and working poor.

      He is a disaster who has made real hardships for people who are not developers.

      Anonymous

      Sep 4, 2013 at 1:06pm

      A mother receiving a wake-up call that having kids is expensive? Should have considered that before having two of them. Condoms are cheaper than children. Society shouldn't have to subsidize your decision to have children. The rest of us know full-well the costs associated with it, and that's why we're not making any. That's why we settled on just having a small dog instead.

      Torn in the Valley

      Sep 4, 2013 at 2:11pm

      I'm not impressed with discounts being taken away as I am on the employer pass program. It may only have saved me $25 a month but since I spend, per month, well over $300 just to get to and from work on transit a little savings sure didn't hurt!!

      I don't have the luxury of being just handedn faresaver tickets because I'm not at or near the poverty line. I travel 2 hours each way to get to work because that's where the money is. You live where you can afford (either rent or mortgage) yet get nickeled and dimed just trying to get around. If its not one way your money disappears, its another (i.e. income tax was only supposed to be around during WWII - I believe - yet since it lines politicians pockets ...it's still here)

      a Mom

      Sep 4, 2013 at 3:18pm

      Dear Anonymous,
      If everyone used condoms and had small dogs instead of children who would pay your pention?? Who will provide your care in hospitals and seniors homes?

      Travis Lupick

      Sep 4, 2013 at 3:34pm

      Vancouver readers on Reddit have questioned the math used to calculate the numbers that appear in paragraph six. (http://bit.ly/19jGVw6) Here's an explanation:

      The discussion was conducted in terms of hypotheticals. Ie. What’s the cost for a family of four to travel from Burnaby to Downtown Vancouver (2 zones) and back again?

      My colleague has since found that we made a miscalculation by failing to take into account how concession fares change depending on the number of zones travelled. The sentence in question has been corrected. It now reads: " $21.50 for a return trip from Burnaby into Vancouver (two zones), she later calculated, and $27 after her youngest’s fifth birthday."

      Here are the numbers:

      -for family of three moving two zones…
      -$4.00 x 2 adults x 2 trips = $16
      -$2.75 x 1 child x 2 trips = $5.50
      -total for family of 2 adults + 1 concession = $21.50

      -for a family of four moving two zones…
      -$4.00 x 2 adults x 2 trips = $16
      -$2.75 x 2 children x 2 trips = $11.00
      -total for family of 2 adults + 2 concessions = $27.00

      -for a family of three moving three zones...
      -$5.50 x 2 adults x 2 trips = $22.00
      -$3.75 x 1 child x 2 trips = $7.50
      -total for family of 2 adults + 1 concession = $29.50

      -for a family of four moving three zones...
      -$5.50 x 2 adults x 2 trips = $22.00
      -$3.75 x 2 children x 2 trips = $15.00
      -total for family of 2 adults + 2 concessions = $37.00

      http://www.translink.ca/en/Fares-and-Passes/Fare-Zone-Map.aspx
      http://www.translink.ca/en/Fares-and-Passes/Single-Fares.aspx

      ?

      Sep 4, 2013 at 3:54pm

      Less QQ more pew pew!

      Natasha

      Sep 4, 2013 at 4:31pm

      I do think it is great that this mother is trying to find ways to take her children on outing instead of just sitting them in front of the TV.

      Heidi

      Sep 5, 2013 at 12:42pm

      This change scares me as I'm a single parent and can't afford a vehicle making transit my only means of travel. Having one income and taking care of a young child, these increases in costs no matter how small they seem to some, will be hard for me to live and budget with. :(

      trolldaddy

      Sep 5, 2013 at 1:48pm

      Well, it costs more to drive and park so take your pick.

      What angers me more is the fact that students can't get jobs in their fields and jobs aren't paying enough..