Dear editor,
Thank you Melanie McCollum and your social media followers for offering to pay more taxes toward our local transit system, especially given that you don’t even use it personally. Hopefully Mayor Jangula can find a mechanism in the city hall bureaucracy to make it happen. While most of us are still coming out of shock from our last tax bill not more than six weeks ago, it’s surprising that others are ready to step up to the plate and pay more for what looks like a $750,000 transit experiment funded by taxpayers.
It’s not surprising that Melanie doesn’t use the transit system. Most of us don’t. Admitting that the ridership has “leveled off,” the new plan to increase ridership is to increase the frequency of trips during certain periods of the day and no apparent plan to modify the existing network.
For many of us who watch our transit buses travel empty or with only a handful of riders on board at most, it is hard to understand how they believe the ridership will dramatically improve and not simply create even more under-utilized bus trips. That is the $750,000 question.
The CVRD transportation expenses for 2016 were approximately $2.5 million not including this latest increase which will then drive it to $3.25 million per year. Ridership is significantly subsidized by taxpayers. Currently, the taxpayers pay 75 per cent of the cost for each rider trip. That subsidy will only increase with the new plan, at least in the short term and very likely the long term.
I, like most believe a public transit system is an important part of any community. But at what cost? Do we really believe that a costly “build it and they will come” experiment will work? I don’t think so.
So, yes Melanie, I am sure this will be one of many election issues next year. Until then, we can only hope the mayor is successful in finding ways to accommodate your generous offer and take some of the enormous and ever-increasing tax burden away from those of us that are finding it a real challenge to pay our tax bills, not to mention costly and questionable public transit experiments.
Irene Murray
Courtenay