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kda
@kda

I'm not going to write a whole memo about this, but TransLink isn't privatised in any kind of simple way as much as being a massive fucking tangle of public and private elements that ultimately does involve an extreme, yet not total, degree of exposure to market forces:

TransLink itself

It's not even a company. Like, by statute, it's exempt from the Business Corporations Act. The governance structure is a tangled fucking mess: The governance structure of TransLink, in a diagram that's probably tenuously legible even for sighted people. Ask me in the comments if you want me to write it down!

TransLink's operating contractors

TransLink operates its services through several different contractors, which do their own subcontracting from there:

Coast Mountain Bus Company

A wholly owned subsidiary of TransLink, which runs 96% of bus service in Metro Vancouver, as well as the SeaBus.

  • Oversees a contract with West Vancouver Municipal Transit, a division of the District Municipality of West Vancouver (so, 100% publicly owned as well), for most bus routes in West Vancouver and three bus routes in the District of North Vancouver.
  • Oversees another contract with Transdev (66% owned by the French government via Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations; 34% owned by Rethmann Group, a German company) for the operation of some bus routes.

British Columbia Rapid Transit Company

Another wholly owned subsidiary of TransLink, which directly runs the Expo and Millennium Lines of the SkyTrain.

  • Oversees a contract with InTransitBC (a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin, a publicly-traded company based in Canada, seemingly with mostly Canadian shareholders) to operate the Canada Line.
  • In turn, a subsidiary of InTransitBC, named ProTrans BC, actually operates the Canada Line.

West Coast Express (Ltd.)

Yet another wholly owned subsidiary of TransLink, which contracts out the operation of the West Coast Express as follows:

  • The route runs along Canadian Pacific's tracks. (Canadian Pacific has fairly thinly spread ownership, but some of the largest shareholders are UK, Canadian, and US.)
  • VIA Rail, a Federal Crown corporation, maintains the rolling stock.
  • Alstom (via their purchase of Bombardier's rail division), a French railway equipment and rolling stock manufacturer (whose largest shareholder is Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the province of Québec's pension fund), operates the trains.

Metro Vancouver Transit Police

This is a "Designated Policing Unit" operating pursuant to agreements with every municipal police force in Metro Vancouver and, to the extent municipalities have contracted out policing to them, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a Federal agency.

  • The Transit Police contracts out the hiring and ongoing employment relations of its officers to TransLink Security Management Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of TransLink.

Actually building new infrastructure

The privatisation gets way, way more intense when it comes to capital investment — and, where large projects are involved, the globalisation, too.

Broadway Subway (Millennium Line extension)

Currently expected to be completed in early 2026.

  • Tunnelling: Ghella, an Italian tunnelling company.
  • Construction generally: Acciona, a Spanish construction company.
  • Signalling equipment: Thales, a French transport company (partly owned by the French government), which is also the eighth largest defence contractor in the world.
  • Rolling stock: Alstom.

Evergreen Extension (of the Millennium Line)

Completed in 2016.

  • Construction: SNC-Lavalin.
  • Signalling: Thales.
  • Rolling stock: Bombardier (since purchased by Alstom).

Canada Line

Completed in 2009.

  • Construction: SNC-Lavalin.
  • Rolling stock: Hyundai Rotem, part of the Hyundai chaebol, of the ROK.

Roads (for buses)

They're built pursuant to municipal and provincial contracts, basically inevitably by contractors and subcontractors, at least some of whom are from the US.

Everything else

I'm not going to go into an exhaustive list of every contractor TransLink goes to for things like custodians, security where Transit Police are deemed to not be suitable, elevator maintenance, so on so forth, but… …they can't even do things as fundamental as operating 100% of their train and bus services in-house, let alone managing construction projects. The point being, though, that even though TransLink is largely public in the ownership of its day-to-day operations, it's still yet another public institution that, thanks to the changes in delivery of services that have accompanied the past fifty years of austerity policies (and particularly the past thirty), is constantly pissing money away into private contractors.


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