Opinion: Public transit should be the focus of the 2024 BC election

Opinion: Public transit should be the focus of the 2024 BC provincial election

June 2024 preliminary concept: Clayton Station on Surrey-Langley SkyTrain; not the final design. (Government of BC)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Kareem Allam, who is a Partner and Policy Analyst at Fairview Strategy, a Public Affairs and Market Research Firm in Vancouver. He has also served as a campaign manager and strategist for federal Conservative and BC Liberal campaigns.

Denis Agar at Movement, a Metro Vancouver public transit rider’s advocacy group, has repeatedly maintained the positive political, economic, and social benefits of public transit.

In advance of the provincial election on October 19, 2024, every political leader should try and understand the potency of what Movement represents. Specifically, how a generational investment in public transit — at the scale and deliberateness of the Pacific Gateway initiatives — could win the election while making meaningful progress in some of our biggest policy challenges as a province.

Pundits, columnists, and journalists love to point to polls and love to highlight that housing affordability is the number one issue. They are correct. It is. But for campaign managers, we look at things differently. We don’t stop at polling the problem, we poll the solution, and this is why housing affordability becomes a tough issue to win an election on.

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Housing affordability, as a problem, cuts across all demographics: young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural. However, the solutions are intensely charged and divisive and the scale means most people don’t believe government can make a difference.

The political left typically proposes measures to curb the demand side, while the political right typically proposes measures to stimulate the supply side. As you dig into those measures, and poll them individually, campaign managers start to recognize how quickly opinion bifurcates and how difficult it becomes to stitch together voter coalitions around housing.

Public transit used to be the same. It used to pit motorists against public transit riders, wealthy vs poor, urban vs. rural. A dollar spent on one group didn’t always seem evident to be of benefit to the opposite group.

For years, public transit politics became highly charged in BC, the pinnacle being the 2015 Transit Referendum. The old orthodoxy on public transit — it’s an election campaign loser. But a few things have dramatically changed since 2015, and we are seeing a convergence from the political left and right on public transit in a way that other issues can’t demonstrate — and to a campaign manager, that’s a political winner.

Here’s what changed. First, outside of the pandemic, BC’s greenhouse gas emissions have typically gone up every year since 2015. The public is realizing that without meaningful and affordable alternatives to consuming large amounts of carbon from vehicles, emissions won’t go down. Public transit has been adopted by young people as an alternative to driving at a rate never seen before. They are voters and increasingly influencing their parent’s generation. For climate-sensitive voters, a fast-growing voter segment, public transit is a winner.

The second, since 2015, BC has struggled to add on new housing supply. In addition, as immigration to BC has sky-rocketed in recent years, the problem has immensely magnified. Metro Vancouver is now the fastest-growing of North America’s 30 largest metropolitan areas. Kelowna has become the fastest-growing city in Canada, with Chilliwack and Kamloops rounding out the top three. Given BC’s topography, we can’t grow out; we need to grow up — and public transit enables densification. For housing supply advocates, also a large voter segment, public transit is a winner.

Third, traffic congestion is negatively impacting our transportation sector’s efficiency and our economic growth and productivity. One-in-12 jobs in the Lower Mainland are tied to the transportation and logistics sector.

1 in 12 jobs in the Lower Mainland is in the transport sector. We need to free up our roads for @PortVancouver @yvrairport. Transport efficiency can pay for our climate and affordability strategy. The money is there. @TransLink you can save us all. @BoardofTrade it’s your work. https://t.co/4Ga9QCTCE2

— Kareem Mahmoud Abbas Allam (@42kareemallam) July 3, 2024

Historical trucking centres in Kelowna and Kamloops/Ashcroft have congestion on their main roads, which makes them more congested than any other in Western Canada.

Prince George, BC’s Gateway to the North, has even contemplated congestion pricing to its downtown core!

Our trading economy is choosing to use Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles rather than BC ports. Traffic is making our food and goods more expensive and life less affordable.

In fact, BC’s trucking associations, chambers of commerce, tourism associations, business improvement associations, and boards of trade are joining the chorus of students, young British Columbians, environmentalists, and labour (BC Federation of Labour) to call for more transit. Even car commuters, who will never, or can’t, give up their vehicles, see the benefit in having their neighbour’s car off the road to shorten their commute times.

Getting cars off roads frees up space for our goods movement corridors. Public transit has been and can be an incredible economic wealth, affordability, and economic efficiency tool, and this large economic voter segment, with a growing chorus of Victoria, Kelowna, and Kamloops advocates, makes transit a slam-dunk economic policy too.

There is political convergence on public transit; the political left and right finally see benefits for themselves. But a tweak here and a tweak there won’t cut it politically, environmentally, or economically.

Doug Ford gets it. Wab Kinew gets it, and Francois Legault gets it.

BC needs a generational investment in transit, and every party’s campaign manager should have Denis Agar on speed dial.

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