Editor: Re: Province, feds team up for transit announcement, NOW, Sept. 4
Instead of building an unconscionably profligate $3 billion subway (to increase ridership capacities), the frequency of the 99 B line buses that currently service the Broadway/ UBC corridor should be doubled or tripled.
The B.C. government should require TransLink to schedule 99 B line buses to travel in pairs and/or in threes during rush-hour periods.
Or implement a two-year trial of bus rapid transit – creating bus-only lanes – from Broadway and Commercial westward all of the 13.7 kilometres to UBC.
Such a system could be up and running in a few short months, for an infinitesimal fraction of the $3-billion
cost of TransLink’s proposed 3.4 mile-long Broadway subway to Arbutus Street – five miles short of UBC.
Unlike the subway mega-project that it would replace, Broadway BRT would act to ensure that planning for new and expanded commuter rail lines, and for long overdue replacement bridges/tunnels in all of Metro Vancouver’s member cities, especially those in the perennially neglected south Fraser area, is done objectively and based on legitimate needs for a change.
That is instead of being driven by stale political agendas of some civic politicians, more than a small few of which are not running for re-election this year.
Roderick Louis, White Rock
