GORDON CLARK,
Metro Vancouver’s mobility pricing commission began musing publicly a few weeks ago about new and innovative ways to rip us off right about the time a virus from hell reduced my mobility to the short distance between the bed and the washroom.
If officialdom had installed a “congestion point charge” in the connecting hallway — as much as I would have supported “decongestion” as a general principle — they would have solved the region’s transportation funding shortfall during those few lost weeks. I’d also be broke, which is what I fear many motorists will be if we allow mobility pricing in Metro Vancouver.
Looking over the seven ways the 14-person commission of the Mayors Council is considering charging drivers to use the roads, the first impression is to marvel at their utter chutzpah.
It’s not even been three years since Metro Vancouverites voted nearly two-to-one against a proposed 0.5-per-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects, despite a wasteful, multi-million-dollar, publicly funded PR campaign.
Citizens didn’t simply reject that specific tax. They clearly communicated that various levels of government are already taxing them heavily enough for transportation through gas, income, parking, property and electricity taxes. Work within your budget, they said.
“There is a clear ‘No’ outcome, we must respect that,” then-interim TransLink CEO Doug Allen said at the time.
Alas, respect for taxpayers is a fickle thing these days, if it exists at all. Rather than accept the message from taxpayers, the mayors almost instantly sat down to figure out another way to tax us.
They also don’t seem to have noticed the new NDP government just fulfilled an election promise to remove the unfair tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges, which are exactly the sort of congestion point charges being contemplated. If the provincial government has decided such tolls are unfair, how does it make sense to replace them with other tolls?
My problems with mobility pricing are numerous.
First, they demand taxpayers pay to use infrastructure they’ve already funded with their taxes, sometimes over many decades.
Second, yet again, it saddles already overtaxed motorists with the cost of public transportation infrastructure that benefits everyone. That is why I’ve always advocated for roads, bridges, tunnels and transit systems to be funded by the general revenue of various levels of government and government obtained loans, which can be obtained at low interest rates over long amortization periods.
Paying for projects that way relies primarily on progressive income taxes, which fairly place the financial burden of such projects increasingly on citizens in higher and higher tax brackets while letting everyone share equally in their use. It also saves the cost of setting up new taxation collection schemes.
That brings me to my third point, the social implications of tolls or other forms of mobility pricing.
I know it is considered “fair” in some circles to place what amounts to user fees on public projects. They really aren’t fair, because they place an unfair burden on a lot of people unrelated to their ability to pay.
Under mobility pricing, some struggling mom or dad with kids of modest income living in the Fraser Valley because that’s the only place they can barely afford to buy a home, would be hit with high tolls of one kind or another, while a single lawyer or other professional with a high income and wealthy enough to live in Vancouver near their work would pay almost nothing.
The NDP, in particular, had better think long and hard about the implications of any form of mobility pricing to the working men and women who generally support them. Other parties should, too.
Do we want the government to impose a system that will have the effect of turning the roads over to the wealthy who can pay fees while forcing citizens of lower income off the roads? Does that strike anyone as fair, especially given transportation infrastructure was paid for by everyone?
Transportation improvements need to be done, but they should be paid for out of general revenue and responsible debt or other ways that fairly spread the cost so all citizens can use them equally based on their need, not on their ability to pay.