It won’t be just on the Port Mann Bridge.
Frank Luba in The Province captured my sentiments:
Gord Price, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, thinks “spreading the pain” is where the region is headed.
“It’s just not going to be the bridge that’s going to be tolled,” said Price, also a former Vancouver city councillor who used to sit on the TransLink board when it was made up of elected officials. “It’s not fair that only the Port Mann and Golden Ears Bridge [have tolls].”
Price sees the tolling system introduced Wednesday as the precursor of a system that can institute “road-pricing” – charging people for the transportation they use.
Price applauded the discount. “I think the ‘loss leader’ is going to get a lot of people registered,” he said.
It is indeed unfair for only bridges connecting South of the Fraser to be tolled (and that’s TransLink’s intent with the proposal for a new six-lane Pattullo Bridge). But let’s face it – Dianne Watts’ proposal to toll every bridge in the region would be political suicide at this point.
Nonetheless, TransLink needs a new revenue source and the region needs an equitable tolling policy. Everything eventually leads to road pricing. After all, it’s not fair that I, a downtown dweller who doesn’t cross a bridge to get to work, should be exempted somehow because of my particular circumstances.
So how it will happen? My guess is that it’s a matter of time and technology. Charges should be based on factors such as distance driven, time of day, degree of congestion – all factors that could be measured if the technology was embedded in the vehicle. And with the standardization and integration of GPS systems, the growing acceptance of car sharing, and even the arrival of the driverless car, a way of user-pay charging will be built in.
The TReO system being introduced for the Port Mann is just the beginning. I’m certainly going to register for it, as will, I’d predict, tens of thousands of drivers throughout the region. Whether they realize it or not (and no politician is going to tell them), the camel has just put his nose into the tent.
Tolling if necessary, but not necessarily tolling. If we did not have the problem of being so close to the US border I would say just go with carbon / gas taxes and transit lanes so transit vehicles don’t get delayed by congestion.
The cost of carbon tax collection is basically zero as we already tax fuel, but it is high with tolls.
Of course road pricing is sensible and technically feasible. It was when I first read about it in “Paying for Roads” a Penguin Special by Gabriel Roth – now available on Google Books originally published in 1967 in UK. Of course, very little happened after that. A trial was set up in Hong Kong, but then so was another new innovation designed to embarrass the Chinese just before handover, a democratically elected assembly. First thing they did – kill the road pricing trial. I do not see any appetite for road pricing here any time soon. Just because it would work, doesn’t mean it will happen.
It might be politically suicidal to want to toll everything but the folly of having a free alternative will soon be apparent when the Alex Fraser and Putello are congested non stop from all the people that already use them as alternatives when there’s say an accident on the Port Mann. I think what we will see on the other bridges will be similar to the conditions we see when theirs and accident on the bridge – gridlock on every crossing.
When this happens it will be clear you either have to have no tolls or no free alternative or you will be artificially juicing the demand on the non tolled crossings.
What I think needs to happen is that screen lines are created similar to the transit zones. Obviously were putting in the first two toll nodes of the south fraser screenline so just run it out to the pacific by tolling Alex Fraser and Massey tunnel.
I would actually switch the toll from the Golden Ears to the Pitt River Bridge and then you have a toll line that nicely defines the outer communities.
Then you put one on the two north shore bridges.
With tolls on all those bridges you would have more than enough to pay the obligations for Port mann and Golden ears even if you only charged one or two bucks a crossing and you would no doubt have money to spare. All I would ask in this case is that the money didn’t go to provincial general revenue, actually stayed in the region, and was dedicated to road and transit improvements (say at 50/50 split) through a dedicated fund.
Sure simply upping the gas taxes would be even fairer but as mentioned that just increases demand to go over the border. By making screenlines the only way to avoid the toll is to hop onto transit – which would have a nice hit of revenue even with only half the surplus toll revenue.
So maybe what we really need it tolls at the border crossings and steep carbon taxes on fuel to fund transit. Everyone already has to stop at the border, so it would be easy and inexpensive to collect.
Actually I have it in my mind to have a border around the region such that you would have one somewhere on the sea to sky (just north of Lion’s bay?), just outside the ferry terminals, and just north of the border crossings. Just tricky to get all the roads between Abbottsford (the other place you can go for cheap gas) and Langley effectively tolled.
And gas taxes and tolls shouldn’t only fund transit the people paying the tolls should see some improvements in the form of road improvements.
However what is more important than that is that it does NOT go to general revenue!