Earlier this year, the BC Federation of Labour commissioned a research report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives titled Connecting BC, which provided a vision and a plan to achieve better public transit across BC within 10 years.  Implementing it would benefit the climate, ease the pocketbooks of British Columbians, and improve our health, all for a fairly modest investment.  

Many groups in BC want better public transit, so the report provides an umbrella that allows groups to situate their concerns in a broader framework that political parties could be asked to adopt as part of their platforms in the October provincial election.  

The provincial team of the West Coast Climate Action Network attended the webinar on the Connecting BC report, convened a meeting of some of the principal public transport groups to strategize, and then wrote to invite all political parties to adopt the Connecting BC vision and plan, ahead of the election.  

At the strategy meeting, these points emerged:

• We must take care not to undermine each other’s priorities by pitting rural public transport against urban, or better service against cost. Some groups want free transit for students or low-income groups, for instance, but if this happened at the expense of more buses on overcrowded routes, it would not be an overall win.  That’s one reason why using the Connecting BC report as a joint ask is so useful.  

• Similarly, it’s easy for the government to pass the buck among departments about funding priorities. We should resist the temptation to join in, generating needless backlash, and call attention to such evasion when we see politicians using it. 

• Newsworthy events leading up to the election might increase the pressure for politicians to act, such as interviews at bus stops with Lower Mainland transit riders who can’t board overcrowded buses, documenting rural seniors who can’t get to their health appointments without a bus, or making a video that shows how difficult it is to get from Victoria to Nanaimo and back by bus.  Groups could think about signage supporting public transport linked to election posters. 

• Todd Litman, a transportation planner, has written in the Cowichan Valley Citizen that provincial governments in British Columbia “spend about $1,000 annually per capita on roads, $215 on urban transit subsidies, plus about $50 on sidewalks and bikeways, but less than $5 on interregional bus services, mostly on Highway 16 in Northern B.C.”  This alone should be enough to start a conversation about transit planning and investment.

• Many groups and individuals have detailed knowledge about particular parts of the public transit system, and email lists where they share information. These include:

•  Better Island Transit: https://betterislandtransit.ca/ 
• Better Transit Alliance of Greater Victoria: https://bettertransityyj.ca
•  Let’s Ride – Make Public Transit BC Wide: https://bcwidebus.com
• Make Transit Work Campaign (UVic and Camosun College) https://uvss.ca/make-transit-work/ 
• Movement: https://movementyvr.ca
• Okanagan Transit Alliance: https://www.okanagantransit.com 
• Transit for Teens Petition: https://www.centreforequity.ca/transit_for_teens_petition 
• Transport Action British Columbia: https://bc.transportaction.ca
• Weekly Alternative Buzzer on Public Transit: email Nathan Davidowicz to subscribe atnathandavidowicz2@gmail.com 
• West Coast Express Expansion Association:   https://wceea.ca
• West Kootenay Transit Action: https://westkootenaytransitaction.ca

WE-CAN’s Provincial Team is interested in hearing from your group about what you’re doing to improve public transit and how we can make a joint effort to make this happen. Please email the team lead at  rieky@westcoastclimateaction.ca