I think humanity took a major downturn when we started paying for things before delivery. At least when the producer of goods has to prove their product is real and worth paying for I have the option to back out. Once they have my money, what motivation is there to make me satisfied?
Such as it is with TransLink, it seems. With revenue guaranteed for years with the last U-Pass referendum, the improvements that begin and end with the abortive gondola project will likely be trotted out at renewal time every few years, only to be rescinded as a non-priority when we have no choice but to cough up the dollars. Such as it is with the latest delay in the gondola project, and the last hope of some lasting new transit infrastructure on campus for what I’m sure will be at least a decade.
We’re as tied to TransLink now as a junkie is to their dealer. As more and more of this campus is sold off to build condos that few students can afford, parking spaces climb in price and scarcity. With little other option to physically put us on the hill, SFU is at the mercy of TransLink, a company continually proving themselves indifferent to the poor service offered to a captive customer base.
The complaints are well weathered at this point. A person standing at the secondary bus loop during peak times can expect a few 145 route busses to pass them by until they are so inclined to head up to the primary Cornerstone loop. Entitled much? Not when those peak times have bowed to the increasing population of the SFU student body, peak hours now extending from around 3:00 p.m. to past 6:00 p.m. A great number of these commuters to Production Station are simply taking the train one stop to Lougheed Station, a problem easily remedied by study and reallocation of bus resources. If there is a more overburdened route outside of the 99 B-Line I’d be surprised.
As I’ve written before, the 145 line is twinned with the 135 line, resulting in a backlog the most cursory of audits would reveal. While busses start stacking up around 8:30 a.m. at Production Station, the true test occurs a couple of hours later when everybody has class to attend. By that time, traffic has started accumulating on East Hastings, resulting in 20-minute delays on both lines. Now you and 300 of your nearest and dearest get to hang out in a well-intentioned wind tunnel bus stop at Production for 30 minutes to make a 10-minute trip.
Long bus waits are common, but as my junior high gym teacher always said, we’re looking for improvement, not perfection. Five years of depending on bus service to Burnaby campus and the only evident change is for the worse. I’m sure frequenters of the 143 to Coquitlam would agree as TransLink just abandons them on the weekend.
There is a major issue of safety, as well. Packed like sardines in these busses, the drivers manically attend their schedules and fly down a parkway we all just assume will take around one life per year. One patch of ice or driver drifting into oncoming traffic is all it will take. When will the overstressed transit solutions and lack of road improvements claim a bus full of kids? Will their flowered memorials be enough to convince TransLink and the university that the current solution is as unsafe as it is ineffective?
Right now, students stand at an impasse with a transit provider stretched to its limits deprioritizing them now that we’re fully dependent, and a university bound and determined to sell off all of its parking space to developers while packing classes to their limit. Multiple administrations have ignored the fact that the logistics of moving people on and off this mountain are at the heart of SFU’s problems. They’re running the risk of making a school on a mountain exactly as daunting as it sounds.
