While it will have about 90 percent commuter traffic, the Canada Line will also open up the tourist market to TransLink with its airport connection. This is something new to the agency, but not something it is wary of.

“We think it’s great because if we can encourage people to visit and they don’t rent a car, we think it will be a really good market for us,” says Jacobsen.

TransLink’s Other Side

As Bill Knight, the guide on my TransLink tour explained, TransLink likes to be called a transportation agency, not a transit agency. And no wonder when the agency controls most of the major road construction projects in the region.

“We manage the roads,” Pat Jacobsen puts it simply. “I have a theory, which is that it is easier to raise money for public transit by being part of a broader transportation network than by being transit alone.”

Jacobsen points to a 2001 American Public Transportation Association study that showed that referenda were most successful for agencies that were multimodal — road and transit.

“Most people think, oh it’s a competition. I believe that having the road as part of your mandate means you’re the agency of everyone in the region and all of the shippers and all of the businesses in the region and not the authority of 9 percent or 11 percent or whatever your market share is,” says Jacobsen.

She should know since the major road network TransLink oversees includes about 12,000 miles of highway, is 100 percent funded by the agency and it is in charge of all major capital improvements on the network, including seven new road projects.