TransLink fiasco reminiscent of fast-ferries farce

Every time I ride the SkyTrain and see those non-operational fare gates — standing there about as useful as a screen door on a submarine — I get a feeling of deja vu.

The non-working Compass Card gates remind me of the NDP’s botched fast ferries, another public symbol of a bungled project.

The aluminum-hulled fast ferries were built under the NDP government of the 1990s at the staggering cost of $463 million. They proved to be white elephants, used only briefly by B.C. Ferries before they were pulled out of service and put up for sale.

The Liberals inherited the fast-ferries mess when they took power in 2001, but they didn’t sell the NDP’s floating lemons (for a paltry $19 million) until 2003.

For a long time, the useless ferries were tied up at Deas Dock in Richmond, where they were visible to thousands of passing motorists every day.

I suspect that was a deliberate move by the Liberals. They liked putting the NDP’s half-billion-dollar boondoggle on public display for all to gawk at. So what’s TransLink’s excuse?

The inoperative fare gates stand as a stark daily reminder of TransLink’s Compass Card debacle, a system that was promised to be operational by 2013.

Now two years behind schedule, the unused fare gates are probably the best advertising possible for the No side in the current transit-tax plebiscite.

Doug Allen, the new $35,000-a-month CEO brought in by TransLink in February, said he’s still getting briefed about the Compass Card mess.

“These are large, complicated, transformational projects — it’s not surprising that it would take a number of years,” Allen told Province reporter Ian Austin.

“We have to move as quickly and successfully as we can.”

But Allen has refused to say when the system will finally work, saying it was a mistake for TransLink to be pinned down to a timetable in the first place.

He has also refused to say whether the budget for the Compass Card system will balloon again. The cost estimate currently stands at $194 million, $23 million over the original budget. It’s all music to the ears of No campaign supporters.

The unused fare gates will continue to rust in place and gather cobwebs. There’s no new time commitment to get the system to finally work. And the CEO brought in to clean up the mess won’t guarantee an already over-budget boondoggle won’t sink even deeper into the red.

Of course, the Yes campaign does have a bottomless pit of taxpayers’ money to draw from. When you have $7 million to spend, you should be able to figure out who supports your side and make sure they mail in completed ballots.

The No campaign, meanwhile, is not being funded by taxpayers and has disclosed less than $30,000 in campaign donations. On paper, it’s a David-versus-Goliath matchup.

But, just as those unused fast ferries ticked off voters in the 1990s, TransLink’s unused fare gates will certainly anger many No voters this time around.