Is there new funding for TransLink in the BC government's budget?

TransLink trolley bus (Wangkun Jia/Shutterstock)

The Government of British Columbia’s newly announced 2024 budget today is light on brand-new investments towards public transit.

It sets aside $28 million in operating funding over the next three years to expand provincial transit authority BC Transit’s services in priority communities, in addition to $248 million in capital funding for expanded BC Transit infrastructure outside the Lower Mainland to increase maintenance and storage capacity for incoming new battery-electric buses.

Leading up to today’s budget announcement, TransLink and the Mayors’ Council launched a new public awareness campaign to support their formal request to the provincial and federal governments for both additional operating and capital funding.

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TransLink’s service levels are currently directly supported by the provincial government’s March 2023 commitment to providing the public transit authority with $479 million in additional operating subsidies, which cancelled the plan for steep service level cuts beginning in Fall 2023.

The $479 million is intended to sustain 2019 service levels until late 2025, at which point TransLink might be unable to avoid a round of major cuts to service levels. While Metro Vancouver’s overall public transit ridership is now coming very close to rebounding fully to pre-pandemic levels, fare revenues continue to be lower due in part to passengers buying cheaper fare products — more single-trip fares, and fewer monthly passes — as they are making fewer (less frequent) trips on public transit.

But there have also been calls from TransLink, the Mayors’ Council, and advocates to provide more operating funding sooner than later — possibly in time for the seasonal service changes in September 2024 — for the specific purpose of increasing service levels to address growing overcrowding, especially on the bus network.

“Today, we saw a budget released that did not offer them any relief from the chronic overcrowding and passups that has overtaken the transit network in the last two years,” said Denis Agar, the executive director of advocacy group Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders, in a statement. “This budget ignores the transit shortage that affects one in six British Columbians.”

When it comes to capital investments, the new budget reaffirms the provincial government’s funding commitment to build the $4 billion Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, which will begin major construction activities later in 2024 for an opening in 2028.

It also includes a capital expenditure line of $1.1 billion for unspecified “Transit Infrastructure” investments, including $422 million in the 2024/2025 fiscal year, $401 million in 2025/2026, and $242 million in 2026/2027.

TransLink is looking for significant funding from senior governments to achieve a range of initiatives over the next few years, including the launch of its first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes, carrying out general bus service expansion, expediting the transition of the bus fleet to battery-electric vehicle models, performing more infrastructure maintenance and upgrade works, and building the gondola transit line reaching Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Burnaby Mountain campus, which is expected to see its business case and detailed technical design planning finalized later this year for a potential construction start in 2026.

The SkyTrain Millennium Line extension west of Arbutus to reach the University of British Columbia (UBC) is also an identified priority for TransLink and the Mayors’ Council. But business case work, detailed technical design planning, and geotechnical studies including soil sample drilling still need to be performed, with the provincial government informing Daily Hive Urbanized earlier this month that these upcoming activities are currently expected to cost about $40 million. The federal government has also provided $14 million to the provincial government to cover these pre-construction planning costs.

The completion of this business case and the associated planning work — all led by the provincial government — will also provide more accurate total project cost estimates, which is necessary to determine potential senior government funding commitments. Preliminary pre-business case cost estimates peg the SFU gondola at just over $200 million, while the UBC SkyTrain extension is certainly to be a multi-billion dollar endeavour.

As this is an election year, more new formal funding announcements could be made by the provincial government in the weeks and months to come, in addition to campaign platform promises closer to the election date.

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