NEW WESTMINSTER—TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond says he hasn’t taken his eyes off the lines.

There are two maps side by side on the wall in this New Westminster meeting room. One shows the extensive network of lines operated by TransLink; the other shows where the authority plans to expand those networks by 2025 as part of the 10-year mayors’ vision.

From where he’s sitting, Desmond says, that plan is on track. It’s getting ahead, he says, that’s the “many billions of dollars question.”

The flagship projects are a subway expansion on West Broadway in Vancouver to Arbutus Street, currently the site of North America’s busiest bus route, and a new rapid transit system from the growing city of Surrey to Vancouver to the north and Langley to the south along the Fraser highway.

The mayors’ vision, developed by Metro Vancouver’s mayors in 2014-2015, hasn’t been without setbacks and political jockeying. But with those major projects scheduled for completion in 2025, Desmond is able to turn his attention to popular asks that haven’t yet been singled out as priorities.

The next big plan looks forward 30 years, so there’s a gargantuan list.

The University of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver want to see the Broadway subway extend all the way to the university campus, an ask that would more than double the length of the approved project and cost billions. Mass transit is yet to come to Delta, to the south of Vancouver. The north shore municipalities of the city and district of North Vancouver, West Vancouver and the province are independently studying the feasibility of a rapid transit link with Vancouver. Burnaby wants to see a gondola to the Simon Fraser University campus.

“Legitimately, the other mayors around the table — the north shore is a very obvious example — are saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, what about us? When does our turn come?’” Desmond said in an interview.

That question will be answered, he said, with dollars and cents. And to get that, you need a plan.

“The general public should really feel like they own this plan,” Desmond said of the Transit 2050 initiative. The plan, which will be ready in 18 months, is currently in its public-consultation phase.

“If they feel like they’ve got skin in the game then, comes the question: How do you make it happen? Because you have to make it happen with money.”

Capital costs for transit improvements are typically paid for collectively by three levels of government. Phase Two of the mayors’ vision — which includes the Surrey and Broadway lines and will cost a total of $7.3 billion, about $6.25 billion on capital — saw a $2-billion pledge from the Government of Canada and a $2.5-billion commitment from B.C.

Armed with a data-driven blueprint, business case and community buy-in, Desmond thinks the region has a shot of securing the necessary federal and provincial funding to respond to much of the region’s needs by 2050.

The Transport 2050 plan is more a pragmatic sales pitch than a utopian vision starring drones and automated vehicles, though Desmond expects both those terms to come up in the report. A public survey that began on May 3 already has 9,000 responses, and Desmond hopes to get tens of thousands more before it ends on Sept. 22 — enough for the transit authority to get a grasp of the region’s values.

Then comes prioritization.

“The challenge of public transit, at least in North America, is you’re always chasing demand. Always,” Desmond said.

Desmond, who started his transit career in New York City, remembers seeing archival photos of elevated train lines being built from Manhattan into what were then farmers’ fields — an illustration of the kind of proactive planning now impossible because of mounting transit backlogs.

“Those days are long, long gone, when folks were building cities at the turn of the last century,” he said.

Metro Vancouver’s regional transit authority covers 23 jurisdictions, so political competition is inherent to TransLink’s structure. Municipalities are in a constant tug of war over where the finite money for transit is allocated in the short, medium and long terms.

As it stands, only the UBC extension and the SFU gondola have been identified by the mayors as priorities past 2025. Other projects, like a potential rapid transit link to the north shore, are more likely to figure in the 2050 plan.

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“The hallmark really of the mayors’ plan is very strong political consensus around the table with the mayors on what the program would be,” Desmond said.

“Now if the mayors decide to broaden the scope of that because there’s so much demand for transit — whether it be more bus service or additional interest in other rapid transit project — we’ll have to see.”

Correction - June 11, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the name of the transit consultation program as Transit 2050.

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