Vancouver-based TransLink’s 2025 Investment Plan was approved by the Mayors’ Council and TransLink’s board. 

The plan will fund the largest increase in bus service since 2018 — on top of increases approved last year — advance bus rapid transit (BRT) projects and makes progress in reducing TransLink’s long-term structural deficit.

TransLink’s Investment Plan 

Through this Investment Plan, TransLink will create new bus routes to serve people in eight areas that currently have no transit and will add or enhance bus routes to improve transit in six under-served areas.

The improvements will increase people’s access to job sites by adding new routes to industrial areas like Campbell Heights (Surrey), Gloucester (Langley), and Tilbury (Delta). 

TransLink will also provide enhanced access to parks like Stanley Park, Terra Nova Park (Richmond), and Golden Ears Provincial Park (Maple Ridge).

Key investments include:

• More service on 50 overcrowded bus routes.

• Improving or implementing 40 new routes, including to 14 areas with no or limited transit service.

• Extending the North Shore’s R2 RapidBus to Metrotown by 2027.

• Design stage for three BRT corridors.

• Improve the condition of Metro Vancouver’s deteriorating roads by expanding pavement rehabilitation on the Major Road Network.

• Continuing investments in local walking and cycling paths, and bus priority infrastructure.

Addressing Structural Deficit 

TransLink was facing a structural deficit of more than $600 million annually because of an operating funding shortage. This was caused primarily by declining fuel tax revenue, increasing costs, and fare increases being capped under the rate of inflation between 2020 and 2024. 

The agency’s new plan will fully fund TransLink operations until the end of 2027 and cut the structural deficit by almost half thereafter.

The Investment Plan will be funded through several measures, including a $20 increase in property taxes for median households in 2025 and a fare increase of $0.14 for the average trip starting in July 2026. 

The Government of British Columbia is also investing in TransLink operations, including a one-time contribution of $312 million and a commitment to a new revenue source by 2027.