With the realities of an NDP-Green minority government looming large for B.C., Lower Mainland transit and transportation officials say the goods and people movement picture remains muddled because neither BC NDP Leader John Horgan nor BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver has offered specifics.
What is certain, commentators agree, is that the new government needs to hurry up, regardless of what the plan is. That’s because the 2015 transit referendum, in which voters rejected a Metro Vancouver tax to pay for improvements in the region, already derailed the federal-municipal effort to add needed improvements to local transit, and observers note B.C. cannot afford another delay.
The regional transit issue, said Simon Fraser University City Program director and former Vancouver councillor Gordon Price, is “like housing,” adding that the previously announced 10-year plan from the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation region’s essentially provided a road map to the solution.
“These are wicked problems to have because they are so connected. The economy, culture, immigration, growth, social division – it’s very tough stuff, and unlike the housing situation, we basically had our act together on transportation. … Everyone knows we have to go with the plan, so why don’t we just get on with it?”
A report by navigation device maker TomTom (AMS:TOM2) ranks Vancouver 34th out of 390 cities globally for road congestion, with an average daily commute delay of 38 minutes.
“That added up to 146 hours a year, which is three and a half work weeks, so that’s very serious,” said Robin Lindsey, professor of transportation economics at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. “And a trucker’s time may be worth $100 an hour or even more, depending on the value of the goods being carried. According to some surveys, they’d be willing to pay a toll for more reliable travel times.”
David Suzuki Foundation policy analyst Steve Kux said last year’s Breaking Gridlock report found provincial spending on transit in the last decade has not lived up to what the provincial government said would be required for effective investment in public transit. While Kux said he is optimistic due to some of the NDP’s public transit investment campaign promises, the next government needs to address the problem swiftly.
“It’s already known that Metro Vancouver loses over $1 billion a year due to traffic congestion, just due to the impact on economic activity,” Kux said. “We simply can’t move people or goods around as easily as we should be able to. … The [2015] referendum didn’t pass, but that didn’t mean people weren’t in favour of public transportation. All the polling showed people support investing in public transportation; where they differed is where that money comes from and how we pay for that investment.”
While several observers noted the potential gains of businesses like ride-shares (Uber, Lyft) in a regional transportation plan that de-emphasizes personal vehicles, almost everyone agrees that the next major topic is mobility pricing: charging motorists a fee based on the distance they travel in their vehicles.
On June 6, the Mayors’ Council announced a commission (with a $2.3 million budget) that will examine mobility pricing’s viability. Lindsey said the program has been successful in several European and American cities, and – once the technological details of tracking motorists’ mileage and pricing have been determined – it could solve Metro Vancouver’s congestion woes.
“The ideal would be to toll everything at a low rate – $0.02 or $0.03 per kilometre,” Lindsey said, “… but the NDP promised during the campaign to eliminate tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges, and would seem to go against the idea of mobility pricing, which is unfortunate.”
Price agreed that mobility pricing will be the key now, but again noted that implementing a strategy quickly is vital to the economic well-being of the city.
“The jobs you are expecting from the LNG [liquefied natural gas] didn’t show up, and the jobs that did come are in tech, medicine, education, corporate services, culture and tourism. They are literally along the Broadway line; it’s exactly the growth engine for the type of jobs that would balance the budget.” •
