ROCKY ROAD LIES AHEAD
In 2008, TransLink and Metro Vancouver undertook a consultation process that consisted of 60 presentations in which 2,700 participants provided feedback, two public-opinion surveys that tapped 9,000 Metro residents and an online poll that drew thousands more. The results showed support for some system of road-pricing, a policy that subsequently became one of the Mayors’ Council on regional transportation’s recommendations to raise revenue and reduce congestion.
However, the mayors lumped it in with an increase in the gas tax, a new vehicle-registration fee and a regional carbon tax, opening a political Pandora’s box that prompted then-transportation minister Blair Lekstrom to reject the entire proposal.
Fast-forward to this week, and the mayors, along with the TransLink board of directors, are taking another kick at the can, having appointed an independent commission on mobility pricing chaired by Allan Seckel, CEO of Doctors of B.C. and former deputy minister and ex-head of the B.C. public service. Former NDP MLA Joy MacPhail will be vice-chair, while Daniel Firth, who worked on introducing congestion taxes in Stockholm and London, will be the executive director. The commission will have a budget of $2.3 million and deliver recommendations by next spring.
By then, the issues of road-pricing and bridge tolls will have been debated for over a decade. No one can say this idea has come as a surprise.
But circumstances have changed since people first voiced support for mobility pricing. Home prices have doubled (or more) as has Vancouver’s housing-affordability index, taxes of all kinds (income, property, sales, gas, carbon) take more than half of the average wage-earner’s income, the cost of almost everything has gone up (about 15 per cent since 2008, according to the Bank of Canada), while median household incomes rose only 6.9 per cent.
The commission must take into consideration that high home prices have driven families out of Vancouver. Road-pricing and bridge tolls will penalize those same people who fled high housing costs and who must now commute from the suburbs. Public transit in these areas is infrequent, unreliable and time-consuming. Moreover, a monthly transit pass covering three zones (travel from Delta, Surrey, Coquitlam) costs $172 as of July 1. Those rich enough to live close to downtown can walk or cycle, meaning, in effect, road-pricing and bridge tolls will fan the flames of economic inequality.
Taxpayers have every reason to question why they must pay again for transportation infrastructure their taxes have already paid for or why user fees are deemed to be the only option for financing the building of bridges and road improvements. This will be the commission’s tough row to hoe.