Another TransLink executive bites the dust
Heads continue to roll at transportation authority after bid for tax revenue lost in vote
Executive heads continue to roll at TransLink.
The latest member of the transportation authority leadership that will be leaving is David Beckley, the organization’s vice-president of Rail Projects.
He is assisting, according to an email from the organization, “with the transition of his work and team within TransLink” until his departure on Aug. 28.
“The VP, Rail Projects position is being eliminated,” said the statement. “Over the past four years, TransLink has reduced management and executive by approximately 30, for a total savings of about $4.4 million in annual salaries, pensions and benefits. In addition, executive pay cuts have saved about $330,000 a year since 2013, and base salaries have remained frozen.”
Until earlier this year, Beckley was in charge of the long-delayed Compass Card program which has been tied up in technical issues.
The changes follow departures of two top executives, Doug Kelsey and Bob Paddon, in mid-July.
Kelsey was the president and general manager of the B.C. Rapid Transit Company, the TransLink department in charge of SkyTrain and West Coast Express. He was replaced by Mike Richard, who was described in a TransLink release as a “30-year SkyTrain veteran.”
SkyTrain came to B.C. in 1986 as part of Expo 86, a world’s fair with a transportation theme that was staged around the industrial lands that have become the Concord Pacific-developed part of False Creek.
Paddon was the executive vicepresident of strategic planning and stakeholder relations, a position that has also been eliminated.
The changes come in the wake of voters rejecting a 0.5 per cent increase in provincial sales tax to fund TransLink’s third of an ambitious $7.5-billion, 10-year expansion plan that included light rail in Surrey, SkyTrain expansion in Vancouver and more bus service.