Friday, February 08, 2008

Just a little extra change for the bus...




From the nice work if you can find it department comes the latest from Translink, Metropolitan Vancouvers Transportation Authority, responsible for the buses, skytrain system and the seabus to name a few of their modes of transport.

Running a major transportation system for a large Canadian city must be a rather taxing job, as the newly appointed board of Translink just received a fine little welcome to the job package, in the form of a 1,000 dollar a meeting raise in pay for when they meet the six or more times a year to discuss the pressing issues of big city transportation.

The outgoing 12 members on the board were mayors and councillors from throughout the Lower Mainland, who collected 200 dollars whenever they got together to compare bus timetables and Skytrain arrival messages.

Now with more "professional" types appointed to the board the need to properly compensate them is apparently paramount among the first of the decisions to be made.

Mike Harcourt, the former B.C. premier who chaired the independent advisory committee that decided on the pay hike seems to be suggesting that this group is going to be a bargain for Vancouver, with some feeling that the salary might even be low because the TransLink board is responsible for a $1-billion operation whereas the airport authority only has a spending budget of $100 million.

All of which most likely means that the cost of riding the Vancouver transit system is most likely only to go up.

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