Two important online questionnaires are closing on Wednesday, October 27, so I’d just like to encourage you to fill them in if you haven’t already! And tell your friends!

On Evergreen Line funding, property tax, and more: have your say on our potential 2011 supplement plan

You may have heard lots of rumblings about the Evergreen Line, property taxes, and a transportation improvement fee lately. Well, these are all discussions around our potential 2011 supplement plan, which is a TransLink proposal for more funding in 2011, so that we can start key transportation projects in the region like the Evergreen Line and the North Fraser Perimeter Road.

To learn more, check out this blog post for a high-level overview of the plan and why we are proposing it now. Then check out the 2011 Supplemental Plan section of the TransLink website for more detail on the plans.

Then make sure you fill out the questionnaire about the supplement, so we know what you are thinking! This questionnaire will be closing on Wednesday, October 27, 2010, at 4pm!

Weigh in on our principles for transit service optimization

As you may know, TransLink is embarking on a project to take a good look at our current transit service and see where it can be optimized—it’s called the Service Optimization Initiative.

But before we embark on this journey, we want to know how you think we should proceed. As such, the project team has come up with several principles to direct their work, and we want you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on these principles before we move ahead. I’ll quote them here because they are short:

We are committed to operating the system as efficiently and effectively as possible to give everyone the best value for every dollar invested. A Service Optimization Initiative is underway to make the best use of our existing bus network, and 10 principles will guide our decisions:

* Where service is underused, decisions will be made to:
– Maintain service, to the greatest degree possible, for transit dependent customers.
– Maintain services which are strategically significant for network connectivity.
– Minimize service reductions in areas where there are no other transit alternatives.
– Minimize impacts to existing infrastructure.
– Protect growing markets, where ridership or productivity is substantially improving.

* Where we reinvest services and resources, decisions will be made that are expected to:
– Generate higher ridership and/or address overcrowding.
– Generate increased revenue ridership in proportion to increased service levels.
– Maximize use of existing transit infrastructure.
– Increase revenue ridership.
– Support TransLink’s long-term goals and objectives for the regional transportation system.

So: fill out this questionnaire and tell us what you think! The questionnaire will also be closing on Wednesday, October 27, at 4pm.

You can also learn more about the Service Optimization Initiative on the TransLink website, as well as in this press release from April 2010 about the initiative.