One of the big roadblocks to adequately funding transportation in our region is the limited options available to TransLink if it wants to raise its next $450 million in ways that defer spending on new infrastructure and make better use of what we already have.
The bureaucratic code for this is transportation demand management (TDM). Some of the favoured funding tools now available, like fare increases, have the reverse effect: creating an incentive to drive, adding to congestion and hastening the need for new roads and bridges. Other measures, like a tax on parking, while having merit have been squeezed into dysfunction by overzealous application.
As the Drive out the Tax coalition (DOTT) points out, TransLink pushed its legislative options to the limit when it increased a 7% parking tax to 21% in January 2010. With the HST piled on, Metro Vancouver paid parking lot customers now find themselves paying North America’s highest parking taxes: 35.5%.
DOTT is promoting the rebirth of the allowed-but-unused vehicle levy, all dressed up for spring in new, flexible clothing. The coalition is calling it a transportation improvement fee. It would charge vehicle owners different rates for different uses, for different distances usually travelled, for place of residence, for commercial use and for fuel-efficient engines, all topped off with a free cash-back equivalent transit pass.
Both the excessive parking tax and this accessory-laden transportation improvement fee are desperate measures to get what we can out of the limited TDM options available to TransLink. While these are preferable to behaviour-neutral property tax hikes, they’re not as effective as other options. One of my favourites appears about to be expanded in Washington state: express toll lanes, also known as high occupancy tolls. This is a voluntary tax on people willing to pay to use a (formerly free) high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane.
Writing in the excellent online news journal www.crosscut.com, former Washington secretary of transportation Douglas MacDonald explains how express lane tolling works, why it’s catching on across the U.S. and why it gets support across the political spectrum.
“The best current example is probably I-95 heading north out of Miami. A peak hour trip in the seven-mile express lane costs an average $1.75-$2, but on one occasion has reached $6. The lane that used to operate as an ordinary HOV lane at an average rush hour speed of 20 mph now operates at 56 mph. Off-peak the toll falls as low as $0.25.
“The striking fact on Miami’s I-95, however, is found in the adjoining free lanes. Their former rush hour average was 20 mph. Now they operate at 41 mph. The drivers of just 25,000 vehicles a day – a tenth of the vehicles on this I-95 stretch – pay for the speed premium. But the system delivers for everyone, even those who don’t use the tolled lanes.
“Washington has its own modest pilot project on State Highway 167. Two years after the old HOV lane was converted to a tolled lane, the number of cars in that lane at peak rush hour had increased by 12% and were moving at the speed limit. The typical speeds in the adjoining regular lane, even with slightly more traffic than before, had increased by 11%.
“In short: a more useful, more efficient highway for everybody.
“There is enormous appeal to the ancillary benefit of speed-reliable express toll lanes: a backbone for bus rapid transit networks without huge costs for separate rights-of-way.
“Customer surveys show that the users of the express lanes are from all walks of life – hourly service people like plumbers driving between jobs, delivery van drivers, parents hustling to day-care pickups, and ordinary people late for the dentist or a dinner date. What a novel idea! Finally, people may make their own choices of their own individual balance between money spent and time spent.”
TransLink has to be allowed outside its current legislative box to embrace novel free-market ideas like this.