The TransLink Board of Directors decided that a third-party contractor will continue operating Metro Vancouver’s HandyDART accessible transit service.
In its decision on Wednesday, the board says the contract model provides the most cost-effective operation of the service.
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“Management concludes that maintaining a partial contracted delivery model offers the best balance of customer experience, financial sustainability, maximizing service availability, and operational feasibility, while avoiding the risks and costs associated with transitioning to an in-house model,” the board said in a written statement.
Joe McCann, president of Amalgamated Transit Union 1724 (ATU), which represents approximately 600 HandyDART drivers, dispatchers, and maintenance workers, is disappointed about the board’s decision.
“We have a huge problem with that, given that the public wants it brought in-house, the mayors want it brought in-house and the riders want it brought in-house,” said McCann to 1130 NewsRadio.
The union gets support from multiple mayors across the Lower Mainland.
Last month, nine mayors and city councils from across Metro Vancouver advocated for TransLink to resume operating HandyDART.
In a TransLink review of the delivery models, staff suggest a “fully in-house model” would be the most expensive, citing operating impacts such as hiring new staff, and the possibility of unions bargaining for parity of wages with other workers.
“These factors combined have the potential to increase annual cost to the TransLink Enterprise budget by $20 million to $70 million a year,” said the staff report.
McCann says he wonders how the staff came up with that number.
“They had no real reporting on that,” he claims.
“They said, we are going to be asking for parity in this meeting I had with them. But in the same thing, the report says we already get parity with Coast Mountain, so that’s not a real argument. They’re saying maybe $70 million is what it’s going to cost to write a few procedure manuals. That’s just absurd.”
McCann says if HandyDART continues to be contracted out, it will result in more money lost.
“It’s going to be more corners cut in the service. We’re going to see more taxis being used. We’re going to see a decline in overall quality of service… And it’s not what the people want. It’s not what the customers want. It’s not what the clients deserve. They deserve properly trained HandyDART drivers that know what they need.”
To counter those complaints, TransLink announced it will be upgrading HandyDART.
Those changes include a service extension from midnight to 2 a.m. and the introduction of new software that enables online trip booking and cancellations.
TransLink has employed France-based Transdev Group to operate the service since 2023, when Transdev acquired the previous operator.
—With files from Dean Recksiedler
