As the region rolls inexorably toward new funding sources for its transportation services, forces are gathering to push through new taxes previously unimagined.
The prevailing political orthodoxy is that vehicle levies and tolls on existing roads and bridges will never be acceptable, especially in municipalities where owning a car is an unavoidable fact of life.
There’s no surer way to light up the switchboard on a radio talk show than to say we should add tolls, other road-use charges or levies to the lengthy list of taxes already paid by car owners.
As long as that new repaving project, highway widening or bridge maintenance is coming out of general revenue it doesn’t appear to be costing us anything, even though those costs run into the billions, far more than the missing $400-million-a-year to meet the objectives of TransLink’s 2040 plan – things like building the Evergreen line, dealing with inexcusable bus pass-ups along Broadway and expanding rapid buses in Surrey. Conventional thinking is that only when the new fees are visible do the screams of political pain become audible.
That may be why an ad hoc group of 42 senior policy-makers, business groups, transportation interest group lobbyists and activists from both sides of the Fraser recently landed on grabbing a share of the 2012 carbon tax as the best option for getting transportation (OK, mostly transit) funding back on track.
The group was assembled by the Sustainable Transportation Coalition to see what politically saleable funding options would be sufficient to meet TransLink’s 2040 plan. All comments were off the record, but the results could be made public. The “invisible” carbon tax took top prize, followed by a vehicle levy, road pricing and bridge pricing.
But if road and bridge pricing were lumped together, then “tolls” would have been at the top of the list, followed by the carbon tax and vehicle levies. The group preferred the terms “road pricing” and “bridge pricing” to tolls. With today’s technology, prices can be adjusted according to the time of day or expected levels of congestion. Late at night, you might not have to pay anything. At peak hours, prices would spike, rewarding people who travel in off-peak hours and relieving congestion for people who have no choice when to travel.
Similarly, vehicle levies have morphed to include choices. Smaller cars with smaller engines could pay a smaller vehicle levy. Or drivers who live far from transit options could pay a smaller vehicle levy. Another suggestion was to give everyone who paid a vehicle levy a transit pass, or a transit discount, increasing his or her travel choices.
All of these options do double duty. They raise revenue and, unlike property taxes, transit fares, hydro levies and development levies, they encourage more efficient use of roads and bridges.
The world has changed since citizens first went berserk at the notion of a vehicle levy in Metro Vancouver. We’ve seen the arrival of a third car-sharing business (see “Car2go launch targets Vancouver” – May 10-16; issue 1124), electric cars (see “Moving stories”, page 10), telecommuting, more compact communities and the end of mandated parking in new developments. Standing by are public bike-sharing, distance-based car insurance and new apps that eliminate long anxious bus-stop waits by telling transit users exactly when the next bus will come.
Two competing visions are racing down the road to approval. One is the dense community shift toward car-free mobility exemplified by Vancouver’s plans to remove the last remnants of its 1970s freeway viaducts. The other is car-dependent suburban sprawl built on multibillion-dollar freeway and bridge expansions. One opens up greater choice and freedom from gas prices, financed by new taxes and fees. The other shackles us to a fuel-dependent price escalation of a whole different order, powered by invisible taxes every bit as real.