Dear Editor,
TransLink recently admitted that approximately 2.7 millions riders did not pay the applicable bus fares last year.
My 10-cent calculator shows that that works out to about 7,400 unpaid fares a day.
And yet Mayor Greg Moore of Port Coquitlam states on TV that he finds this falls into acceptable levels compared to other cities.
We don’t live in other cities, we live here, and this loss of revenue has to be considered totally unacceptable.
And then he wants us to vote for a 0.5 per cent increase in the Provincial Sales Tax.
Considering an average fare of say $3 times 7,500 unpaid fares per day equals $22,500 per day, times 365 days per year equals $8,212,500 of unpaid fares a year.
That’s a lot of money, and if there are more that 2.7 million unpaid fares, why would anyone pay? There is no penalty for non-payment.
It’s time TransLink started collecting that unpaid revenue.
Running a transportation company is not a hobby, it is there to provide a service, a service that should be paid for by all travellers.
Joe Schillier, Langley
