To Vote or Not to Vote? Metro Vancouver Ponders Transit Referendum

[marmar]

from the Next City blog:


To Vote or Not to Vote? Metro Vancouver Ponders Transit Referendum

Vancouver | 12/18/2013 2:14pm |
Stephen J. Smith | Next City




Canadian cities, like those in the U.S., have traditionally been run as representative democracies, in which voters elect politicians who then carry out their mandates. But sometimes, politicians either don’t know the wishes of their constituents or don’t want to take a stance on a controversial issue. So they’ll throw the issue back to the citizenry in the form of a referendum.

In Vancouver and its surrounding cities, transit has apparently become one of those let-the-voters-decide issues. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, of the center-right BC Liberals (Canada has a somewhat confusing, though perhaps more efficient, system of political parties whereby those at the municipal, provincial and national levels don’t always align), has called for a referendum on transit spending, with two new projects taking center stage.

A $3 billion expansion of SkyTrain, an elevated driverless metro system, would serve Vancouver’s Broadway corridor, anchored by the University of British Columbia and home to North America’s busiest bus route. (It carries 110,000 rides per day, besting buses on Manhattan’s First and Second avenues.) If transit were doled out by merit, the Broadway-UBC corridor would have gotten a SkyTrain line before the Evergreen Line in nearby Burnaby, Port Moody and Coquitlam.

Just southeast of Vancouver, the city of Surrey is looking for approximately $2 billion for a three-line light rail system. TransLink, the regional transit coordinating body, wanted to build a SkyTrain line in Surrey, but the city of about 468,000 said that it would prefer three light rail lines to one metro line. .............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://nextcity.org/theworks/entry/to-vote-or-not-to-vote-metro-vancouver-ponders-transit-referendum