Canada Line is on its way, yay! But I just want to keep you aware of a couple of key things that are still coming down the pipe here.

Remember our BePartofthePlan process — it involved the month-long consultation in June, where we asked for your feedback on transportation plans for the next 10 years?

Well, we’ve finally collected the results of the consultation, and we’re moving forward with the 10-Year Plan process. Here’s a few new things that you might want to be aware of.

Final public consultation report is now online

Our final consultation report is now online!

It outlines how our entire consultation process worked, and summarizes the findings from our in-person meetings and our online game and forum. (At a glance: about 500 people came to our in-person events, and we had over 45,000 visits to the bepartoftheplan website. 3,000 played the “It’s Your Move” game online, and 227 people made more than 1,000 posts in 144 topics)

The main page for the consultation report can be found here. The report is 20+ pages, and also has nine appendixes of reports and other content for you to read.

First steps: the Board approves our 10-Year Plans

Last week, the Board approved the 2010 10-year base plan and two supplemental plans as submitted by TransLink.

Our governing law now requires a review of these plans by the Transportation Commissioner, and then approval by the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation by the end of October.

If no supplemental plan is approved by the Mayors’ Council by October 31st, 2009, the base plan will be implemented immediately.

Okay, now let’s back up a bit so I can explain what this means!

Every year, TransLink is required to come up with a 10-Year Transportation and Financial Plan by law. We must come up with a base plan as our default, and it has to be fully funded by our current resources.

If we’d like to go beyond the base plan, to stave off cuts or even expand, we are allowed by law to come up with supplemental plans. And again, we have to explain exactly where we’ll get our funding from.

So you can actually check out our 2010 10-Year Plan page to read the exact details of these plans. This is what we consulted about during June, and these are the plans your feedback contributed to. (Check out this PDF to see a quick overview of all 3 plans.)

The base plan forecasts drastic cuts: since we don’t actually have a lot of money on hand, we can’t pay for very much service. Here’s a summary, and the base plan in specific.

Of the two supplemental plans, one is aimed at keep us at the current level of service: that’s the one called “Funding Stabilization,” and it increases our current revenue streams roughly $130 million or so, to just cover the funding gap. Here’s the details of that plan.

The other plan, called “On Track,” aims to build toward our region’s Transport 2040 goals. It plans for funding up to $275 million to do modest expansion, through boosting current revenue streams and adding a transportation improvement fee. It also has room to expand up to $450 million, but this would require future funding sources outside our current revenue streams, and those new sources would need approval from the Province. Here is the summary of this plan, and the full details.

If it helps, Jeff Nagel has a pretty good summary over at the Tri-City News. Kelly Sinoski at the Vancouver Sun also has some useful coverage.

Hope this all helps you understand the planning process a bit better!