There have been very few times in my political life when I have seen such a well-choreographed consensus around such a contentious topic. At the Mayors’ Council this morning, each leader but one made a short and supportive statement in favour of the Regional Transportation Investments vision.
It was a masterful herding of the cats; they all sang along with an harmonious meow. And even the lone stray, the perennial opponent of consensus, the mayor of Burnaby, had only a few weak reasons to position himself in opposition.
Greg Moore, who chaired the investment subcommittee, established himself as the most effective leader of this region we have seen since the days of Gordon Campbell and George Puil. Only nicer.
The TransLink staff, standing around the walls at the back of the room, perhaps to hold themselves up after weeks of long nights, watched it unfold with a sense of satisfaction. They know there’s more in there than most of us realize.
The proposal is a fine balance of commitments: something for everyone, everywhere in the region – a plan connected from vision to investment. And all pulled together in 12 weeks. The need to get something on the Minister’s desk may have achieved a consensus that might not otherwise have been possible.
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It may also be the new floor: something we cannot go below. No doubt there will be modifications and compromises, but I have a sense that this has set the level on our expectations. It’s achievable, if we’re prepared to pay.
And yes, $7.5 billion is a big number. So is $3.3 billion, which is what the Port Mann and related works cost. And so is $2 billion, likely the minimum for Massey and Highway 99. So already we’re at two-thirds of what a decade’s worth of transit and regional roads would cost – for just two bridges and some road widening, one of which is looking rather elephant and white-ish.
The word used continually is ‘investment’ – that transit is a lever for economic growth and jobs. And it’s true: it’s not just a social service anymore; it’s the basis for urban development, the attractor for the best employees, the necessary infrastructure for a competitive region. If not for it, we lose economic opportunity, and the region, as we have known it, defaults to auto dependence. Worse, we drift.
So we’ve got a choice. The Premier requires we make one. And if she unites with the Mayors and supports the referendum and it wins, then the credit is hers too.
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If not, then what is Plan B: provincial tax dollars for a road-based transportation system that has not the slightest chance of success?
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Same for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Fraser Institute, the Small Business folks and the rest of the anti-tax apparatus. If not this, then what? Are you willing to support a second-rate transportation system for this region if it means not raising taxes? For the sake of dollars today, is a third-rate region tomorrow the acceptable price?
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Today at the Mayors’ Council we saw something more cynical critics hardly believe is possible anymore: leadership, cooperation, compromise and unity. We have a vision, a plan and, almost, a strategy.
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So now, Premier, your turn. What have you got for us now?
Transportation Minister Todd Stone has said NBW the region is going to get existing carbon tax revenue. He’ll listen if the Mayors want a new carbon tax, but forget about any existing provincial revenue being re-directed.
and round and round we go…for how long has this been going on? got to be 6-7 years…mayors rehash the transit plans and ask for a so called “new revenue stream”…province says no way – use property taxes…then nothing happens for a year or so…and then repeat…
Because the funding cannot come from the province or the feds primarily .. maybe only incrementally. It seems fair to me to not ask folks in Kelowna, Kamloops or Prince George to fund Lower Mainland transportation issues. The time to ask ” the other guy ” to pay for benefits is over. The money has to be raised locally through road tolls and much much higher property taxes, factor 2 at least. Property taxes are too low in Vancouver. This would also monetize the high foreign influx of cash into real estate. Why are the mayors afraid to do what is so obvious, especially in Vancouver & Richmond where most of the foreign cash lands ?
But residents of Metro Vancouver help fund transit in Kelowna, Kamloops and Prince George – as well as everywhere else in BC that has transit. We pay BC provincial taxes that support BC Transit.
So why doesn’t that apply the other way around?
Exactly right. Someone sitting on an empty house on the West Side isn’t going to be paying provincial or federal taxes to contribute to this, yet they’re property holding is forcing workers to move farther afield. Why not a stiff luxury property tax on home worth over a certain amount
I’d rather the carbon tax be raised than reallocated. Reallocation implies raising income and corporate taxes (which are the “tax expenditures” carbon tax revenue goes to).
The Province is projecting surpluses in the hundreds of millions in the coming years. They could easily fund more transit by reallocating existing revenue.
I suppose I have to defend one of my earlier claims here. in the Mayors’ Council Report on page 4 is the following statement:
A Line of Cars to Regina
Over the next 30 years, we are expecting that another one
million people will make the region home, putting about
460,000 new cars on our already congested roads — the
equivalent to a line of cars stretching from Horseshoe Bay to
Regina, Saskatchewan.
http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/MayorsCouncil_Vision_June-12-2014.pdf
In the video I created that some of you may have seen I claim that with the additional vehicles the line of traffic would stretch from Horseshoe Bay to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Along the highway Regina is 1,743 km away and Sault Ste. Marie is 3,705 km along the highway (through Canada)
The population projections I used are for 1.1 million people over the next 30 years – which appears to be the official estimate, but I understand wanting to use an even 1 million.
http://www.metrovancouver.org/planning/development/strategy/LandUseDesignationMapsJan11/TableA1-PopDwelUnitEmpProjforMVSubregMuni.pdf
The current vehicle ownership rates were calculated by municipality in 2011. The projected number of new vehicles was based on the current vehicle ownership rates in these municipalities and their expected population growth. A total of 730,000 new vehicles was projected. The 2011 vehicle ownership rate in Metro Vancouver was 64%. Because more growth would be experienced in areas with higher current ownership the rate for the 1.1 million additional residents was projected to be 67%.
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/RegisteredVehicles.pdf
This report projects a 46% vehicle ownership rate for new residents. This is about 2/3 the current rate. I’m not sure what methodology was used in the calculation but it seems quite conservative to me. Of course this rate is dependent on what transportation investment choices we make today along with a myriad of other factors – so it seemed to me at least that it might be too subjective to use something else. One thing I did not account for that would be important is the proportion of people who are of driving age in the current population compared with proportion for the new residents – and maybe that accounts for some of the difference.
Also the average vehicle length used in their calculation was 3.8m. This seems extremely conservative to me – it is a little shorter than the Nissan Micra. I calculated the average length of the typical vehicle types at about 4.6m. These account for about 93% of the registered vehicles. The types of large trucks and very large trucks used in goods movement account for about 4% of the registered vehicles, and motorcycles account for the remaining 3%. This gave the average vehicle length of about 5m that I used in my calculations.
http://www.automobiledimension.com/photos/nissan-micra-2013.jpg
I apologize since the details of my calculation are not the most relevant topic – but I felt like I needed to put the information out there.
– Matt Taylor
Don’t know about the federal dollars. That $3.9 billion is from the Building Canada fund and the federal gas tax. That seems to be higher than what’s committed to the GVRF. Anyway, not an expert but how much of that 3.9 is committed dollars versus new?
The $3.9 billion is federal and provincial funding. Anyway, the province and the Feds should be funding a higher percentage of the capital costs of transit. There is a federal election next year. Transit funding is a big issue in cities across the country. The parties should figure out from the big Liberal win in Ontario that people care more about funding for transit than tax cuts.
Funding ? You mean borrowing i.e. offloading to future generations ?
or investing in future generations? Funding operational costs with borrowed money is one thing – that would be true offloading to future generations – but capital costs is used for generations and helps to support the economy and allow users to save money and time in the long run.
More B lines but no road tolls ? Don’t the buses get stuck in traffic too ? So why take a bus if it is not faster ? Do we get dedicated bus lanes ? A major flaw !
No road tolls to reduce # of cars as this is the only way to ease congestion ? A second major flaw.
A short Broadway line with buses from UBC ? No real improvement for UBC folks. A third major flaw.
Nothing about unions and their excessive wages & benefits ? A forth major flaw.
Mobility pricing is included in the later years of the plan. It will take some time to get it in place though.
Quite the contrary, Richard. One can install meters/transponders very very inexpensively at 20-50 choke points across the region and start collecting toll this year, or next. Then use that money to buy buses, trains and build infrastructure. Car use is far too cheap and far too convenient in Vancouver, as this city was built with cars in mind. Only expensive road use will reduce car use, not more buses crawling at the same speed as cars with far less convenience than my own private car with A/C, music, no one coughing in my face or sweating next to me !
Building and planning a subway or major dedicated bus lanes will take far more years and far more money than merely installing some overhead transponders at 50 traffic lights with existing poles !
What about those overpaid unionized employees ? How do you expect tax payer buy-in here ?
It really is fantastic to see such broad support for this plan across the whole metro region. Proof that politicians can indeed work together!
It seems we now have a “yes” side for this referendum.
Who will comprise the “no” side? The usual anti-tax suspects Gordon listed above.
In other cities facing transportation challenges (that’s a long list!), the chambers of commerce/boards of trade have come out as strong advocates for this type of infrastructure investment. These types of endorsements do wonders to counteract the complaints from the likes of the Fraser Institute. It’s tough to say that something will be bad for the economy if the chamber of commerce/board of trade endorses it.
I hope the mayors council is now putting the full weight of their skills and resources behind this campaign.
The No side will likely comprise the electorate who voted out the HST, I don;t see a tax on people’s mobility going down very well.
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Congestion and gridlock are a tax on mobility.
Investments in the transportation system are the antidote.
And so with a crash of the gavel the Mayors’ Council brought an end to the asphalt era!
or not .. as road tolls are nowhere in sight. Only far more expensive road use will lead folks out of their cars onto more inconvenient, slower buses .. and that is at least a decade off in this new plan here .. poor, not very bold, incremental, non-visionary ..
I am a loss to see why everyone thinks this wish list is realistic. The Mayor’s Council didn’t make any hard choices, they merely put virtually everything everone wanted on the list. And once again tried to bob and weave to avoid being accused of raising taxes, by pushing funding onto the areas of provincial jurisdiction.
Despite that Dianne Watts was already quoted as being unhappy about a tolled Patullo remaining at just four lanes. Her successor will find that a tough sell to their constituents. And then there’s the Skytrain to Nowehere, otherwise known as that bustling hub at Broadway and Arbutus.
The original proposal was over $20 billion. The $7.5 billion plan is not only realistic, it’s the least we can do to simply keep up with growth.
What we have now is a SkyTrain to nowhere. A SkyTrain to central Broadway is the right thing to build. It really needn’t go any farther than Granville, but Arbutus has far more room to accommodate the needs of a tunnel boring machine and more upscaling potential for the mayor’s developer friends.
UBC is a big destination, but the peak hour crush isn’t getting any worse because any growth in the daytime population in the last few decades has come from new residential development.
Campus is well served by 12 different bus routes that are busy in peak hours in the peak direction, but run mostly or completely empty the opposite direction, even those that serve downtown peak hour commuters. Getting all the central Broadway customers off the #99 will free up tons of space for UBC people and replacing the #43 with a proper B-line will help on the southern side, the last bastion of significant car traffic to/from campus. Of course that will only work properly if the City of Vancouver stops procrastinating and does something about transit priority for 41st Avenue. Sadly, given the track record of the current mayor, I’d say the odds of that happening are low.
If you read the fine print the new Pattullo is supposed to be expandable to 6-lanes. The Alex Fraser opened as a 4-lane bridge “expandable to six” and was operating as a 6-lane bridge within a year. One might predict the same fate for the new Pattullo.
Notice, in the Mayorscouncil video, that the narrator states “In Vancouver, the VISION introduces rapid transit in the Broadway Corridor.”
I wonder whose clever idea that was?
See and hear the “vision” statement at 2:45 in the video.
Well, I want to focus in on the Broadway Rapid Transit part. I did not see any costing figures on the Mayorscouncil website, but I did read in the Vancouver Sun that the Millennium Line extension is estimated to cost $1.98 Billion, from VCC-Clark station to Arbutus – 5.1 km in length.
Interesting. I have been saying for a long time that I thought that the $2.8 Billion cost estimate that TransLink and the City of Vancouver have been using, that was prepared in 2007, for the entire line to UBC, is outdated and too low.
If one uses a simple cost factor of 2.4 (12 km / 5 km), then if 5 km costs $2 Billion, the entire line would cost $4.8 Billion to build, not $2.8 Billion.
Agree or disagree?