LIBERAL PITCH FOR SURREY VOTES: Province will cap bridge tolls at $500 a year, saving commuters $1,000 a year
Limiting crossing fees in Metro would save daily commuters about $1,000 a year
The B.C. Liberal party is promising to cap Metro Vancouver bridge tolls as part of its re-election campaign platform.
The Liberals will unveil a pledge Sunday that, if they are re-elected, motorists won’t have to pay more than $500 a year to cross the region’s toll bridges.
For a commuter who crosses a tolled bridge twice a day for work, five days a week, it would cut their current annual bill of about $1,500 by about two-thirds.
“This cap on tolls will put over $1,000 back into the pockets of daily commuters who use these bridges to get from home to work and back,” said Mike de Jong, the Liberal finance minister, who is running for re-election in Abbotsford West.
The cap would apply effective Jan. 1, 2018 on the region’s two tolled bridges, the Port Mann and Golden Ears, where motorists pay $3.15 a crossing, or $6.30 for a round trip. The cap would also be in effect for the George Massey Tunnel replacement bridge, set to open in 2022, and a possible future replacement for the Pattullo Bridge, say the Liberals.
To qualify, a person would need a vehicle transponder from TReO, which automatically records and charges registered drivers using either bridge. Once someone reaches the $500 maximum, they wouldn’t have to pay for the rest of that year, according to the Liberals.
The Liberal promise is expected to form a key part of the party’s re-election platform, which will be unveiled Monday, the day before the April 11 official start of the election campaign. Voters cast their ballots on May 9.
The bridge toll idea could be a vote-getter in commuter ridings south of the Fraser River. That includes the voter-rich region of Surrey, where two cabinet ministers are in tough fights for re-election, and Delta South, where the Liberals hope to pick up a seat with the retirement of independent MLA Vicki Huntington.
The B.C. NDP have not yet announced a platform on Metro bridge tolling. But the party has promised, if elected, to increase the government’s share of funding transit projects to 40 per cent, and work with mayors to re-evaluate whether the George Massey Tunnel bridge replacement really needs to be built.
The sudden toll promise from the Liberals is likely to be viewed unfavourably by Metro mayors, who have been calling on the government for years now to develop a new tolling policy for regional bridges. Transportation Minister Todd Stone has largely ignored those suggestions, saying it could be several more years before a tolling policy is finalized. A provincially-imposed cap would further complicate those discussions.
The toll cap proposal will likely also prompt questions about whether it will worsen the financial situation on the two toll bridges by robbing them of revenue at a time in which they are already hemorrhaging money.
The Liberals say that their government would cover the cost of the lost toll revenue in excess of the cap, estimated to be $30 million a year, and that the money would be redirected back onto the books of the provincially created transportation agency that runs the Port Mann Bridge, and TransLink which runs the Golden Ears Bridge.
Drivers have already been detouring around the Port Mann to try to avoid the tolls since the $3.3-billion bridge and highway project opened in 2012. That’s meant the bridge is awash in red ink, because it’s failed to get the ridership and revenue originally projected in its business case.
The Port Mann has lost $407 million in its first five years, is projected to lose $90 million this year, and tens of millions more until it’s expected to break even in 2025.
Nonetheless, the government claims drivers can be lured back due to the bridge’s convenience, that traffic has grown 14 per cent since last year and that the project will be paid off by 2050.
The Golden Ears is also facing financial challenges. It lost $45.2 million in 2015, or $280 million since it opened.