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.<p>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."<p>> A report by HDR Consulting found that, even after the sales tax, the average family can expect to save about $360/year.<p>I'm going to bet that HDR Consulting was smart enough to provide the answer their client was looking for.<p>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??"
I live in Vancouver and will be voting Yes; but I am pretty confident that the No-side will win this battle.<p>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.<p>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.<p>"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.<p>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.<p>Oh well.<p>(the proposed transit plan given a successful Yes vote: <a href="http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...</a>)
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:<p>1) Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people.<p>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).<p>If this was done as an increase in property and gas taxes, I suspect it'd be a different story.
No-voting Vancouverite here.<p>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?<p>I don't give a rat's ass about transit. I bike to work!<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Hey, that last paragraph is a joke, no offense intended! :)
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...
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>Sources:
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-program-delayed-again-by-translink-1.2701045" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-...</a><p><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-salaries-too-high-taxpayer-group-says-1.1316199" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-sal...</a>
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.<p>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?
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.<p>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!<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Bridge" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Brid...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing</a>
<i>The cost: half a penny added to the provincial sales tax.</i><p>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%?
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.<p>By most metrics (trips per capita, on time performance, farebox recovery) Vancouver has one of the top transit systems in North America.
Yep, because there's never a downside to tax hikes.<p>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.
I live in greater Vancouver and I take public transport almost every day. I am almost certainly going to vote NO.<p>Translink just threw $200M down the drain on the Compass program ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29</a> ). 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.