Urban public transit goes off the rails
Voters in Vancouver overwhelmingly reject sales tax hike to fund system
In November 1997, voters in the Denver region, one of the fastest- growing municipal hubs in the U. S., voted overwhelmingly against a plan to fund an ambitious new network of public transit with a small increase in taxes. The defeat was presented at the time as the product of, among other things, incompetent campaigning by the pro- transit side and a reflection of the city’s pro- car culture.
Seven years later, though, Denver tried again, and this time they got it right.
In 2004, Denver- area voters approved a small sales tax increase, with the money set aside to fund a comprehensive new system of light rail transit. They did so following a cohesive campaign, run as much by the local business lobby as by politicians, and in the face of a culture that remains resolutely car- first.
In the aftermath of the Vancouver region’s rejection of its own transit plebiscite, the results of which were made public Thursday, public transit advocates across Canada could be forgiven for engaging in a collective collar tug.
Sixty- two per cent of Metro Vancouverites rejected their mayors’ proposal to raise $ 7.5 billion over 10 years through a half- per- cent sales tax hike.
But as the Denver case shows, not all transit referendums are doomed to fail. Even voters who have already said no to new revenue tools can come around, if the message is right and the campaign well run.
For transit planners in cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto, all facing huge and expensive transit needs, the important question, then, is why did Vancouver fail?
Gordon Price, the director of the City Institute at Simon Fraser University, and a prominent backer of the yes side in the Vancouver plebiscite, says now the very idea itself was flawed.
“If you really believe regions have to move forward, referendums are destructive, expensive,” he said.
Price believes the overwhelming no vote will bolster those across Canada who would prefer municipal governments not invest in big projects at all.
“From the point of view of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Fraser Institute and the C. D. Howe Institute and all the rest of that apparatus, what a winner!” Price said.
“You got people in Vancouver, for God’s sake, to vote against transit. You slayed the green dragon in its own den. They’ll be looking around for the next opportunity.”
Not everyone believes the Vancouver process itself was to blame, though.
“The way the referendum was structured was almost a gift to the yes side,” said Brian Kelcey, an urban governance consultant in Toronto.
Kelcey thinks other cities could win transit votes linked to taxes and infrastructure. But they’d have to go about it very differently.
“I don’t think it’s hopeless,” he said.
To get there, transit advocates would have to design plans that had wins for everybody, including commuters, transit riders and the rest, before they went to the voters, he said. “If that happens, I think you’ve got a better shot.”
At the same time, Kelcey does think the Vancouver result — a resounding no, not just in the region as a whole, but in every individual municipality — should give pause to those who back a high- density, transit- first vision of Canadian city building.
“If you’re speaking to the urbanist movement, in other words, people who tend to support different kinds of mobility in cities, people who support density in cities, city planners, people who tend to think in terms of Canada’s future being defined in terms of our cities, this was clearly a defeat,” he said. “There needs to be a challenging of the assumption that the urbanist vision of how cities should work is inevitable.”
Two years ago, Anne Golden was hired by the Ontario government to chair a panel on transit funding in the Toronto region. She came back with a report that called for raising transit cash by increasing either gas taxes or the HST.
Golden saw both of those options rejected by a Liberal government then heading into an election. She sees some parallels between that decision and the Vancouver vote.
“I would say it’s extremely disappointing,” she said. “I think it’s indicative of a reservoir, unfortunately a growing reservoir, of public distrust of governments and their political institutions, and I say that because the rationale for the additional tax to me was very clear and the need is obvious.”
Golden, a director at the Ryerson University City Building Institute, said it’s always hard to convince voters to pay for something now that they won’t benefit from until years down the line.
“How do you get people to accept responsibility for more spending when they don’t feel it’s a crisis yet … even though we know and can predict that it will be a crisis?” she asked. “I don’t know.”
If you really believe regions have to move forward, referendums are destructive, expensive. GORDON PRICE