Vancouver's public-transit system is expected to be one of the city's bragging points during the Olympic Games next month.
It will be carrying a million passengers a day on the Canada Line, the other SkyTrain lines, ferries and buses - up nearly 50 per cent from the normal load.
But once the visitors are gone, along with the extra $17-million that Olympic organizers will have contributed to provide enhanced service for two months, the agency that runs public transit will face a thorny question: What now?
TransLink's CEO quit to take a high-profile job in New York last fall. That came right after TransLink's mayors council staged - and lost - a huge public battle to convince the provincial government to support a massive expansion, financed by fees on road use or carbon emissions. And for the first time in over a decade, there will be no increase in service hours for the massive and growing region.
TransLink board chair Dale Parker and acting CEO Ian Jarvis say that, for now, the system needs to pause and figure out where it's going. That means there are no immediate plans to hire a new CEO to replace the recently departed Thomas Prendergast.
"We're not rushing to a search," Mr. Parker said. "We need to be clear about whether we're on an aggressive expansion program or running a stable one. That dictates the management decision."
Mr. Jarvis said the agency's focus now is on running the existing billion-dollar system, which will provide 7.1 million service hours of transit in 2010 - excluding the Olympics - more efficiently.
"We've put a lot of service out there in the last few years: the Canada Line, an expansion of cars in the existing line, Golden Ears Bridge, a 40-per-cent increase in buses. With that, and the economy, that requires us to take a bit of a breather."
Added to that, TransLink is actually taking a hit in revenues because of the slowed economy, even though the Canada Line is doing better than anyone expected, with an average of 88,000 riders a day.
At the same time, though, fare revenues for the overall system and money from fuel taxes are down because there isn't as much truck and commuter traffic.
So one result of the efficiency drive and the poor economy will be a shift in bus routes "to move from less productive service to more productive service," Mr. Jarvis said. That means routes with lower ridership may end up with longer waits between buses. He said those routes haven't been identified yet.
That shift is, in part, a response to the report that TransLink commissioner Martin Crilly issued in the fall.
He said that TransLink had spent beyond its means for years on the assumption that "if you build it, they will come."
What happened instead, he said, is that TransLink had to increasingly subsidize the system as it extended service to a greater number of low-ridership routes and the amount of fare revenue covered less and less of its operating expenses.
Another change: The agency is reorganizing itself. That resulted in the disappearance of three vice-presidents at TransLink and one vice-president position at Coast Mountain Bus in December - a move that will save at least half a million dollars a year.
But in the next 12 months, TransLink will have to figure out a plan beyond maintaining the status quo.
Mr. Parker said the agency will likely come up with a new 10-year plan by early 2011. By then, he and his board will have to decide whether to push for aggressive expansion, the way they have the last few years, or settle for more incremental growth.
They will also need to figure out how to pay for the Evergreen Line in the region's northeast. Both Mr. Parker and Mr. Jarvis said the much-delayed line is a priority.
They have a couple of years of breathing room because the line already has $800-million in federal and provincial funding, but at some point soon, the agency will need to decide how to raise the money to cover its share of construction costs and to operate it.
The one bright spot for TransLink, said Mr. Jarvis: the Olympics.
"We are trying to use the Olympics," he said, "as an opportunity to get people to experience transit."
Frances Bula