Metro Vancouver mayors are confident that Victoria will enact legislation this fall to hike gas taxes $0.02 per litre to fill the funding void for the long-stalled Evergreen Line.
The change would give TransLink $0.17 from each litre of gas, or enough to provide $43 million annually to pay for the borrowing cost to build the Evergreen Line and finance:
- improvements to the Metrotown, Main Street, Surrey Central and New Westminster SkyTrain stations as well as the Lonsdale SeaBus terminal;
- B-Line buses along King George Highway from White Rock to Guildford; and
- more bus routes in south Surrey and Langley.
In addition to the gas tax, the mayors are lobbying Victoria to create a funding framework that will pay for future regional public- transit improvements.
“We really want to get to long-term funding solutions,” West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones told Business in Vancouver earlier this month. “That’s where we’ve been stuck for a while.”
She said the new revenue structure might also include:
- a vehicle levy;
- a regional carbon tax; and
- road tolls.
Goldsmith-Jones and other mayors believe Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Blair Lekstrom and long-time Evergreen Line champion Premier Christy Clark will support the mayors’ requests.