Metro Vancouver mayors want Victoria to hike gas taxes $0.02 per litre and enact a mechanism to raise long-term funding to pay for regional public transit improvements.
Some other components of this mechanism could be:
- a vehicle levy;
- a possible regional carbon tax; and
- road tolls.
“We really want to get to long-term funding solutions,” West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones told Business in Vancouver after she broke the news at a news conference at TransLink headquarters. “That’s where we’ve been stuck for a while.
“The good news today is that the minister has heard and is going to be giving proposals for a graduated transportation levy, a possible regional carbon tax and possible road pricing.”
Part of the mayors’ optimism that the province will enact these changes stems from positive feedback from Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom, who met with the mayors last week, and from longtime support from Premier Christy Clark that the Evergreen Line will be completed.
Clark championed the project when she was a cabinet minister in the early 2000s.
“We need to make sure [the Evergreen Line] happens,” Clark told BIV during her run to be Liberal leader. “I’m really committed to make sure that the Evergreen Line gets built. The people of the northeast sector have waited long enough.” (See: “Expect more SkyTrain disruptions: light rail advocate” – BIV Business Today; July 5.)
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: GlenKorstrom