Memo to Translink: Here's a quarter, appoint somebody who cares.

On January 1, Translink raised fares for the fourth time in five years. A regular one-zone (i.e. intra-urban) fare went up 12.5 % from $2.00 to $2.25. When I moved to Vancouver in 2000 it was $1.50. For those of you scoring at home outside of B.C., if you're making a return trip from Surrey (pop. appx. 350, 000, a good chunk of which commute to downtown Vancouver) during peak periods, it's $8.00 return.

What's the fare increase paying for? Translink claims it has a comprehensive plan, but elements of the plan (such as the new trolley buses) have been promised to Lower Mainland transit users almost as long as the promise of Christ himself descending from the heavens, getting behind the wheel, and demanding exact change.

If you can read between the lines , the fare increase (and discriminatory property tax increases) pays for Gordon Campbell's pet project, the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) Line ($2 billion and counting), to do whatever it pretty much feels like, even it means lying to the public and/or taking apart Granville Mall and not necessarily putting it back together again, the kind of thing one can get away with in a "Public-Private Partnership".

Meanwhile, workers and students either jam onto the meagre fleet of buses that travel the Broadway Corridor from Commercial Drive to the UBC Campus, or just watch them roar by overloaded with stressed-out passengers. It's easily the heaviest used transit corridor in Western Canada and about a third of Translink's daily ridership.

Unfortunately, give or take the new Thunderbird Arena, the Broadway Corridor doesn't have enough 2010 Olympic bells and whistles for Translink and their BC Liberal puppett masters to install rapid transit that would actually help people. It's like they're looking more for a Montreal-type legacy than a Barcelona or Sydney-type legacy.

Oh, and the fact that the old money wastes of skin in the neighbourhoods en route, Point Grey and Kitsilano, think transit is for icky poor people who have business being anywhere near them. When it comes to "partnership", they (and the corporate sock puppets they vote for) love it private, and hate the public.