What happens if TransLink can’t fix its deficit?

If you need a refresher, you can always catch up on part one of Hanna’s coverage. Stay tuned for part three on funding solutions.

Kelly Zhen relies on transit to move around the city. As a South Vancouver resident, she uses buses and trains to commute downtown, for grocery shopping, and to take her kids to some of  their favourite spots, like Science World and Costco. 

“I can go everywhere with my Compass Card,” Zhen said. 

Zhen finds transit in Vancouver reasonable compared to her previous experiences, even if  some buses tend to be overcrowded during peak hours. She used to rely on taxis when she lived in Venezuela, and, before that, on a bicycle to get to school growing up in China.

Zhen said reduced transit service would impact her life, though she hadn’t heard of TransLink’s  operating deficit and looming service cuts before speaking with Vancity Lookout. Less transit service would mean she’d have to wake up earlier to get to work, look for new bus routes, and possibly forgo taking her kids to their favourite activities. 

“Now, I think [transit is] okay, [but] if they cut it, it would be difficult for us,” she said.

Transit cuts could become a reality in 2026 if TransLink doesn’t find a way to fill its $600-million operating deficit in the next few weeks. Funding negotiations are in their final stages and will need to conclude around the end of March, according to advocates. Without additional funding, the transit authority has warned it would have to substantially reduce its service levels in Vancouver and surrounding cities, including cutting bus service by half.

Service reductions on this scale would have a lasting impact on the regional transit network, even if sufficient operational funding is secured in future years. “It would take at least a decade to recover to even our current levels of transit service,” TransLink warned in their report.  

These cuts would affect virtually everyone in Vancouver, whether they take transit or not.

Already under-serviced 

Advocates are worried about transit lines  — like along 49th Avenue in South Vancouver — that are already experiencing overcrowding.

“Those bus routes might not disappear, but in a situation where you have to cut half of bus services, the frequency will really go down, which means the overcrowding will just get so serious,” said Denis Agar, the executive director of Movement, a grassroots organization that advocates for improved transit in Metro Vancouver. 

Overcrowding and less frequent rides will put some people off of using transit all together and they’ll resort to driving, which would “clog the streets,” Agar said.

“The people who don’t have the ability to go out and drive are just going to be stranded,” he added.

South Vancouver already has substantially less transit infrastructure and service than the rest of the city. Despite 32 per cent of its residents relying on public transit to get to work, its neighbourhoods have worse transit than the rest of Vancouver. Fifty-three per cent of South Van commuters spend more than 30 minutes getting to work, compared to 44 per cent citywide.

“If you look at South Vancouver [in terms of east-west transit], you have 41st, 49, [then] nothing in between until you get to Marine Drive. So, you’re looking at like 20 blocks of nothingness,” said Liza Bautista, the director of neighbourhood equity and employment programs at South Vancouver Neighbourhood House (SVNH), an organization that is advocating for better transit in the area.

She compared it to the situation north of 41st Avenue, where transit users can get east and west on bus lines like the 33, 25, the 9 and 99 on Broadway, and numerous buses along 4th Avenue.

While the definition of South Vancouver varies, SVNH defines it as stretching from Boundary Road to Main Street and 41st Avenue to the Fraser River, encompassing Killarney, Victoria-Fraserview, and Sunset. In each of these neighbourhoods, the transit score — a methodology that measures how good a location’s public transit is on a scale of zero to 100 — is below the city average of 74. Killarney is at 59, Victoria-Fraserview at 62 and Sunset at 63.

Its transit centers are concentrated at the north end of South Vancouver, along East 41st Avenue. The closest Skytrain station is Marine Drive or Langara-49th, outside of the South Vancouver catchment. 

With the service they do have, South Vancouver transit users say they face delays, overcrowded buses and lengthy commutes to access other parts of the city. The 49, for example, was TransLink’s third busiest bus route in 2023 with 8.5 million boardings. Sixty per cent of weekday trips during peak commuting hours were overcrowded — where seats and standing space are full, door access is inhibited for most passengers, and pass-ups are likely at some stops. It’s especially challenging for people with disabilities or parents pushing strollers.

Cherry Wong works as a community navigator for the SVNH, which she describes as a conduit between South Vancouver residents and decision-makers. She’s also a transit user, who recently moved to the area after living in East Van. 

Wong has noticed the disparity in transit service between the two areas. If she wants to go north or east, not only does she have to take two buses to get to her destination, but she finds the buses are often delayed. This can derail plans because “if you miss one bus, then you miss the next one too,” Wong said. 

“And the bus is always so full, because [there are] so many transit users in South Van. Especially [the] 49 or 20, they’re always full,” Wong said. 

Residents feel this in their everyday lives, she said. It takes longer for people to travel and it’s harder to get to appointments, events, social engagements and job opportunities. 

Now, with potential cuts to transit, they’re worried the service they do have will only get worse. Several bus routes serving South Van, including the 41, 8, 29 and 26, are in danger of potentially being eliminated.  

Why is it like this?

Across the board, SVNH’s engagement with residents and researchers from Simon Fraser University found that South Vancouver has less resources than most other parts of the city. There’s less social service hubs, with just three community centers, three libraries, and one neighbourhood house.

“South Vancouver has always kind of received the short end of the stick when it comes to funding for resources and social infrastructure,” said Prabhi Deol, another community navigator for SVNH. 

“The residents — because it's such a high immigrant population — don't necessarily know how to speak back, or speak to power in order to advocate for themselves,” she explained.

According to the 2021 census, South Vancouver is home to around 100,000 people, with the largest share of racialized residents (80 per cent) and largest share of immigrants (56 per cent) in Vancouver. 

Liza Bautista added that they might come from countries where they are persecuted for providing feedback, engaging, or advocating with the government — meaning that they don’t feel comfortable to complain.

“If the system is a complaint-driven process, and no one is complaining, then everything must be fine,” Bautista said.

But through SVNH’s years of engagement, they’ve learned residents want better transit. Since 2021, they have been working to get more investment and resources in their communities. They’ve built relationships with community members, collected their feedback on their needs and advocated with politicians and TransLink for change.

In June 2023, the City of Vancouver passed a motion to support South Van and nearby Marpole, with a promise to improve public transit, including potential infrastructure improvements to increase service along 49th Avenue.  

Wong said that TransLink has also noted some potential improvements to South Vancouver transit in its draft goals for a future transit plan, which includes extending bus routes and creating new routes.

But now SVNH is worried that transit cuts will prevent these improvements from seeing the light of day. 

“If funding cuts are going to mean that these changes are never going to be implemented, then it’s just a really big loss for the South Van community,” Wong said.

“Stuck and stranded”

TransLink projects that the majority of bus routes cut would fall outside of Vancouver’s boundaries in cities like Langley or Port Coquitlam, affecting people who rely on transit lines to commute to and from Vancouver for work. Over 675,000 people and 265,000 jobs would no longer be within walking distance to a transit stop. 

Eli Castro, a software tester and transit user in Langley, is worried about losing access to job opportunities in Vancouver. If bus service is reduced, she’d lose a reliable commuting option.

“If you don’t have a car, then your only other option is a taxi,” she said. “I do not drive at all and I cannot ride a bike. So it’s like, I’m stuck and stranded.”

This creates a challenge for Vancouver businesses too, as they wouldn’t have as wide a geographic area to draw employees from. With Vancouver’s high cost of living, many businesses have to recruit from outside of the city, since incomes aren’t high enough for people to reside closer to their place of work, according to Emily Boston, a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

As businesses are already dealing with labour shortages, it’s essential that they can rely on current and prospective employees who live across the region, Boston said. 

And because many of the businesses in the downtown core rely on foot traffic, transit helps by bringing them more customers.

“You want to have people that are walking around, that are shopping, that are stopping to support our local economy and local businesses, not traffic jams with not enough parking spaces available,” Boston said.

Everyone on the road

If more and more people are forced to drive, motorists will also pay the price. Virtually every person in the Lower Mainland benefits from TransLink’s services, according to Werner Antweiler, a professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business.   

“There's often the sense that public transit only benefits the people who are using it. And, of course, that is not true,” Antweiler said.  

Those hundreds of thousands of people currently taking transit instead of driving means there’s less road congestion, saving drivers time that would otherwise be spent sitting in traffic. “That’s something that motorists often ignore,” Antweiler said.

And the more people drive, the worse it is for the city and its residents in other ways. 

Already, nearly 40 per cent of Vancouver’s carbon pollution comes from vehicles that run on gas and diesel, something that transit can cut down on significantly (which is part of the reason why Vancouver is aiming for two thirds of trips in the city to be on transit by 2030). 

“We can't reduce greenhouse gas emissions without having a robust transit network in Canadian cities. There's no other way,” said Movement’s Denis Agar.

Cars also pollute in numerous other ways besides carbon, emitting nitrous oxide, particulate matter, and a number of volatile organic compounds. And even as people pivot to driving electric vehicles, those still take up just as much space as their gas-powered siblings. A 2021 report estimates there are about 3 to 4 parking spaces per vehicle in Canada, with about 34 per cent of those being in public road space.

Cutting public transit service would mean that the Metro Vancouver region would suffer from increased road congestion and pollution, reducing almost everyone’s quality of life. But it's people like Zhen and Castro — who use transit to get to work, to go to school, to run errands, to get to appointments, and more — who’d feel the biggest impact of transit cuts.

And neighbourhood advocates are worried that places that are already under-resourced and under-served, like South Vancouver, will be hit the hardest. 

“When funding cuts happen, it's not just that, ‘oh no, nothing new and nice is going to come,’” said Wong. “But the essential needs of residents are not satisfied.”