At the city council meeting when the transit petition was presented on July 25 it was suggested by members of the council and the city manager that the public should make comments on the city website or write to individual council members or staff. This we did shortly after that meeting, but to date have no reply.
The following are comments on the matter of reducing the transit service in our city and I would hope others will take the time to write to the City of Nelson with their thoughts and share them with a letter to the editor of the Nelson Star.
The City of Nelson, mayor and council are saying they need to reduce the amount of subsidy they give to the operations of public transportation in our city, but haven’t indicated an amount. Based on information obtained from statistics found on their own website, Nelson subsidizes bus fares by approximately $2.07 per rider. In the greater Vancouver transit system that subsidy is approximately $3.85 per passenger, as recently reported in the news, with a much greater population and on top of that they collect a gas tax to pay for new infrastructure thus reducing their interest expense. The passenger subsidy cost for our city buses is about half what it costs for the city to provide streets available for the over 6,000 vehicles used by its citizens. This is in fact a subsidy paid for these citizens use which is contributed to by everyone who lives here, one way or another.
We regularly hear our city boasting of how green we are now and how they plan to be GHG emission neutral. How does this decision to reduce our public transit system make sense in this regard? Should we not be improving the system with more service to encourage more citizens to leave their gas guzzlers at home and use this less polluting system? Other cities have gone this way, by improving the system and reducing the cost to users with the result of immense user increases. This would also reduce the parking congestion we all complain about downtown and probably increase business for our downtown merchants, because people will be able to find a parking spot when they have to, for various reasons, bring their vehicles.
Currently we have four vacant lots in the city that formerly had service station businesses on them. They now sit vacant and polluted. How much taxes is the city losing by not having these lots usable again for operating businesses? Should we not have a city bylaw that doesn’t allow large and very profitable transnational corporations to pollute land and then simply walk away from this property, which thus significantly reduces the tax base for our city? And of course we can’t forget about the huge piece of property currently owned by CP Rail, which is virtually unused and so polluted that very limited use could be made of it, until it is remediated.
Why then are these billion dollar corporations allowed to get away with reducing land values within the city and thus reducing tax revenues while low income or fixed income people are asked to suffer because of a very few dollars needed to provide a good transit system? In many cases this is these folks only method of getting around to do business in the community. And you can be assured these people are shopping locally. Isn’t this a positive thing for local businesses? Local business will surely see a reduction of Sunday shoppers because there is no longer a local transit system. Oh! Some may say take a taxi. People who take the bus are mainly doing so because this is all they can afford.
One final point. People who actually take the bus see the importance to so many citizens in our city for which this is their only method of getting around. Young people, families, particularly mothers with strollers, seniors and people with disabilities actually use and need this service to live in our community. Personally, in our family we spend close to $40 per month to ride the system and over the past 10 years I have never witnessed any of the current members of our council use this system.
The survey done by BC Transit is based strictly on numbers and no faces are ever put to these statistics. Please, Mr. Mayor and council take the time to ride the system over a period of weeks before making any final decisions. We challenge the council to make a schedule for each of them to take turns leaving their vehicles at home and use the system so that you see first hand your constituents needs before you make up your minds.
Looking forward to the open meeting scheduled for sometime down the road on this issue. Council, please ensure plenty of notice and lots of it is given for the citizens to be aware of this event.
Wendy and Barry Nelson,
Nelson