Translink Fares on the Rise January 1, 2008
TransLink is continuing to make major investments in our region’s public transit network to improve travel times, access and safety for transit customers.
Transit fares will rise on January 1, 2008 to help pay for these improvements. Monthly passes and FareSaver tickets offer the best value The rates of increase are lower for monthly passes and FareSaver tickets to offer better savings to regular customers. These new prices will remain in effect for three years.
Since the last fare increase in 2005, TransLink has significantly expanded and modernized its bus fleet. There are 200 additional buses now in service, new routes have been added and buses run more frequently on many routes throughout the region. [Translink]
There are promises of more frequent bus times, more buses, and a third Sea Bus for the harbour trek to the North Shore.
My monthly 1 zone pass will go from $69 to $73 but those who will really pay will be the commuters from zone 3, meaning Surrey, as 3 zone monthly passes rise from $130 to $136 (up $72 annually). To travel 3 zones, starting your trip on a bus, you’ll need to drop in $5 in coins unless they brought in bill readers for the buses too. At any rate, read up on the price changes in this PDF.
To make us feel a little better, on New Years Eve there will be free transit from 5:00pm until service stops - the last Skytrain leaves Waterfront at 2:10am, January 1st.
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December 28th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Yea I just heard about this on the radio. The 1 zone went up $0.25 and the 2 and 3 zones went up $0.50?
Vancouver is the most expensive place to take transit in Canada…. but a lot of people tell me that it’s one of the worst transit systems now in Canada.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Hold on a second… didn’t Translink make a huge amount of profit this year? Like a few millions over their estimated profit? And they’re increasing the fare b/c?
Don’t get me started on Translink rants. Take a look at other North American transit systems or even European ones and you’ll see that Vancouver has a lot of work up ahead still.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Didn’t they promise this last time they hiked our fares. Why we’re lining their pockets, I have no idea. I wouldn’t doubt what Tyler said above. When you look at a place like LA, where the fare is the same no matter where you travel in the region, it makes me wonder why it’s so different here.
*cough*cough*2010*cough*cough*
December 28th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Keira-Anne, having lived in LA, I can tell you the reason why they did that is *no one* takes transit in LA. It’s the weirdest thing. They are trying to give an incentive to get the bazillions of cars off the road. Good luck.
I agree, Vancouver has a lot of expansion to do to even come close to practically any other urban city in the world’s systems. And, it’s really expensive.
But, at least we get a tax break now, if you save your receipts… That’s something. Not much, but something.
December 28th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
thank god for a upass… unless the referendum on it doesn’t pass and there goes another $500 per semester…
December 29th, 2007 at 1:32 am
I would normally be the last person to say something good about Translink, but I don’t have a problem with this. Everyone who’s complaining about the price should go live in Japan - fares are usually twice what they are here, but service is far better and best of all, no property taxes for transit.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Having just done this ten days ago, a one-way trip with the <a href="http://www.rmv.de/" rel="nofollow">S8 or S9 S-Bahn towards Wiesbaden)</a> from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Frankfurt am Main to Flughafen Frankfurt (airport) costs 3.60 Euro, or about $5.20 CAD.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I don’t have a problem with the fare increase, as long as it goes to expanding service. Translink suffers from different problems than most North American transit services - it’s overcrowded and has no capacity to attract new riders. If the extra revenue goes to adding more buses, then great. However, Translink is sitting on millions of dollars in existing surpluses that it refuses to spend, so I have little faith in its operation.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Translink has repeatedly increased fares well not providing an increase in service, few other businesses are capable of pulling this off but unfortunately for riders transit often is a necessary evil. In fact everything is pointing to a system that is worse off now than at any other point since Skytrain started, even though we are paying far more, in far more ways (taxes and levies not just fares) than ever before.
I would not be surprised if fare increases were an honest attempt to reduce ridership which has grown at the same rate as population in spite of all their measures to decrease it. The current system can’t handle the current ridership and i could believe they are raising fares to try to keep more people at home.
I suspect all of this could have been avoided if the G.V.R.D.’s transit was still in the hands of BC Transit, instead of creating Translink to run not just transit but roads, bridges etc, without subsidizing them necessarily to cover those costs. Give the roads etc, back to the government organizations responsible and use Translink money to buy the desperately needed buses and possibly bring in Light Rail or other cheaper than Skytrain alternatives.
Also we need to subsidize the cost for the poorest people, or reduce the fares for everyone. At this point a family of four (two adults, two kids older than 5) pays $17.50 for 1.5hours through three zones, if going closer (and hopefully not crossing zone boundaries) $8.50 minimum and unless you can do your work, chores, shopping, visiting or whatever other reason you went on this trip in under 1.5hours including the ride there(!), your paying the same price to get home. My family is middle class and thats a cost i am not willing to accept i can only imagine what it’s like for our poorest community members.
The saddest fact of all is that my whole family can catch a cab downtown for $5+ depending on traffic and were downtown we want dropped off; and the ride is fast, from door to door and very comfortable. For transit the ride is slow, uncomfortable, we have to walk to train or bus (often through areas with high congestion of vehicle and pedestrian traffic largely due to our inefficient system) and it costs $8.50 (and I’m sure another rise before the 2010). Really easy being green here, eh?