I’ve been surprised at the benign press coverage of current efforts to design a BC-specific mobility pricing scheme. Lord knows, there’s ample scope here for rabid opposition — but we haven’t seen it yet. At least not in any noisy, media-darling, big, well-financed, organized way, as occurred during a certain recent referendum.
Note the several nods to much more transit, its funding, and its key role in congestion control; and a quick nod to “. . . smart growth land use policies”, which usually means compact, centered, complete and connected. I.E. the opposite of the freeway-sprawl model.
Transportation and Infrastructure
Lack of Demand Management Techniques
Mobility pricing is a means to directly charge levies for the use of roads, including road tolls, distance or time based fees, congestion charges. Such charges are designed to provide funding, but more importantly influence congestion by discouraging driving on certain routes, discouraging travel at peak times, and encouraging the use of transit options . . . .
. . . A key to B.C.’s long-term success will be strategic and long-term investment in high-quality public transit. With a road pricing model, users need the ability to choose and have the appropriate incentives to choose public transit. Transit investments by themselves will not reduce roadway congestion. However, they become more effective at reducing congestion if they are a critical component of a comprehensive strategy that includes complementary road pricing, mobility management strategies, and smart growth land use policies . . .
. . . Numerous studies, along with empirical evidence from around the world, clearly demonstrate that simply building new roads and other infrastructure in the absence of demand management techniques, including quality public transit options, will not alleviate congestion in the long run. In other words, in the B.C. context it is not one, or the other, but both.
THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS
That the Provincial Government:
1. Commit to funding transportation infrastructure investment and implementing policies that are equitable, efficient, and contains basic traffic demand management principles;
2. Make as a prerequisite of these visions, the need for investment in public transit to provide viable alternatives to single passenger vehicle travel;
3. Commit to working with regional stakeholders and agencies to implement an urban mobility pricing model as a foundation for sustainable transportation funding, including revising B.C.’s provincial tolling policy to positively affect the fiscal sustainability of existing and future transportation projects; and
4. Review the financial impacts of implementing an urban mobility pricing model with the objective of eventually replacing the gas taxes in concentrated urban areas as a means to generating necessary public support.
Big oil’s finger prints? “replacing the gas taxes”. The objective seems to be to replace gas/carbon taxes, which are presently the most efficient form of road pricing. Would explain the lack of opposition from the usual gang of soft climate deniers.
I disagree Eric. Gas taxes are not the best way forward for discouraging driving. Carbon taxes are being implemented to reduce carbon emissions. This is targeting the problem. As more and more cars become hybrid and electric the target must be the cars and not their source of power.
Catch 22. The problem with relying on taxes on fuel is that the revenue tends to go down as the price of the fuel goes up and people switch to more efficient vehicles, transit or Nikes.
The world glut in oil is now ending (2/3rds of the stockpiles were burned in the last two years) and the price will inevitably go up, and VKT will decrease relative to price. Further, as more Smart Growth planning and availability of better quality walkable neighbourhoods and frequent transit come on stream, VKT will likely enter an even steeper decline curve and revenues for transit investment will probably have to start coming from other sources.
One good thing with increased transit is that when ridership goes up, the per capita cost goes down. A good system with decent ridership will break even much quicker. I don’t have exact figures yet, but with local rapid transit that seems to hover a bit less than 200,000 boardings a day, then it becomes profitable.
The Broadway Subway is estimated to mature in ridership over perhaps 10 years to 320,000 a day, and the additional revenue may enable additional payments on the debt principle which in turn could lop off years and several hundred million dollars on the debt amortization. As the city builds up around the transit line it’s feasible to estimate that the line will have even better ridership and about 65 years of profitable, debt-free service, and will thus be able to assist with funding other transit initiatives.
When people talk about the lack of revenue for transit, and therefore the need to go cheap and impose an inadequate service on dense corridors, like Broadway, I always come back to the long-range picture above. Frequent transit networks cost money up front, but the payoff is huge over the life of the system.
And that payoff is measured in greatly reduced emissions as well as great ridership and revenue.
And massive new & higher property taxes of existing assets or new assets being built nearby. Plus new employment with new income taxes and spenders ie PST and GST revenue. Self funding essentially. The question is: why are we not digging yet ? Such a no-brainer. http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/KPMG-UBC-Broadway-Corridor-2013-02-26.pdf
Many Surrey residents already gas up in Blaine for about a C$1.00 a litre . Distance based .road pricing can provide revenue needed for both infrastructure & competative gas taxes
Many Richmond and Delta people gas up in Point Roberts too. As well as many from Langley in Blaine. Around .87 cents CAN per litre, across the line, today.
A couple of weeks ago the guy next to me in Blaine was wearing a Coast Mountain Bus Company jacket! The irony.
Posted by William, Oct 2017:
“A couple of weeks ago the guy next to me in Blaine was wearing a Coast Mountain Bus Company jacket! The irony”
Posted by Anonymous, Mar 2017:
“What really peeves us is the Metro Vancouver gas tax for transit, so we buy most of our gas across the border. Another big saving. Last time I was over there in the US a guy was filling up next me wearing his Coast Mountain Bus jacket. An off-duty metro bus driver. The irony!”
Posted by Eric, Feb 2017:
“I was recently across the border at the first gas station and next to me was a driver filling up wearing a Coast Mountain Bus Company jacket. I couldn’t help thinking that if I had bought my gas back in Canada then some of that cash would have gone to him so he could spend it on US gas.”
The bots are back. And Eric/Anonymous appears to have a new handle. Or, this famous guy with a bus company jacket must spend a lot of time refueling in Blaine. Maybe he just hangs out there waiting for Pricetags posters to stop by.
Everyone goes to Point Roberts or Blaine for gas, don’t they?
Mobility Pricing: Worst Idea Ever!
1 “Mobility Pricing” is a term invented by the proponents of a scheme to generate a revenue stream while at the same time discouraging and curtailing the use of the auto, surely this is a strategy of diminishing returns if it actually works. This scheme is properly defined as a “Road User Pay” scheme. Let’s call it what it is.
2 “Congestion” is a sales term for what was once called “Heavy Traffic”. It is now called “congestion” a medical term because that makes it a disease subject to the curative power of modern science and technology. The term congestion refers to respiratory function (the lungs) which can be restored with a decongestant, but that has nothing to do with auto traffic, when traffic is moving slowly it is still called heavy traffic!
3 The tracker was invented by researchers studying the secretive and unknown habits of wild life, their movements, feeding habits, sleeping habits, and so forth. The tracker was first attached to humans as the ankle bracelet for the prison population when it was realized that house arrest is way cheaper than building prisons. The next market turned out to be the railroads where the tracker coupled to solar cells and attached to every rail car can report in real time the exact location of your brand new on delivery automobile. The tracker salesman (let’s call him Tracker) soon hit upon the enormous potential for profits to be made tracking drivers. It should be noted that the tracker does not track vehicles, it tracks humans, their movements in real space and time. The tracker is a Big Data Accumulator; it will offer sales to the highest bidder. Is your data safe? Never.
4 Social Justice: the poor ride on donkeys while the rich ride on leather. User pay systems are human discrimination systems, that is why they have been banned from deployment in the Canadian health sector.
5 Free Market Economies are based on freedom of movement; free movement is non-negotiable. Existing road infrastructure has already been paid for through taxation. No one will pay for using what has already been purchased and no one will vote for anyone proposing the “worst idea ever”.
6 Criminality: if it is software it can be put to criminal use, a new underground economy, ransom ware, identity theft, the dark web, bit coins, hacking, etc. Of course all of this would require a small army of software police and bureaucratic bungling to keep things going. The Federal Phoenix Pay system comes to mind, if things can go wrong they will go wrong, because wrong is often a source of big revenue.
7 World War 3 is under way, cyber-warfare in case you have not yet noticed. It only takes a few key strokes and bingo you can install a world class buffoon as the leader of an adversarial country. So as the discussion of user fees for drivers progresses we can expect a divisive Bot campaign against sanity, a kind linguistic warfare worthy of a Chomsky analysis, brain worms designed to make you confused and ineffectual.
8 Pitching propaganda: pedigrees are deceptive, experts don’t matter, neither do statistics. Remember the coal industry and climate change denial, remember smoking and cancer denial, remember Putin and election interference, the plausible denial “no not me”? People lie to protect their interests.
9 Vancouver is not some place else, it is unique in itself: Stop pointing at examples from other places i.e. London was built long before underground parking was ever conceived.
10 “Mobility Pricing” is the rebranding of a failed idea; User Fees. Unfair. Give it up.
I am planning on attending a “decongestion pricing” event. Something tells me you won’t like that term any more than mobility pricing.
Actually a FAR better term. People honestly do not mind to pay if they get value as that is what is normal in the world. You pay more, you get more.
What people do not like is to pay more and get the same or less, as has often been the case with tax increases on properties, incomes or PST/GST !
If you offered a $20 lane on Lionsgate bridge to shave off 20 minutes on a busy/normal weekday afternoon, MANY folks would pay it ! Many. Ditto for other bridges, tunnels or throughfares !
Well don’t be stupid, such an offer cannot be made! Are you employed by a Russian Troll Factory?
The critique
1 Mobility Pricing is more than a term, it reflects a nostalgia for the medieval village, the pre-industrial age, when walking was the principle means of transport. Urbanists are in love with this romantic notion and push it at every opportunity.
2 Congestion is more than a medical term: it carries a meaning that evokes dread and potential suffocation, which is why some folks think heavy traffic is such a terrible thing. Most people don’t care if they are stuck in traffic because it doesn’t really matter if one’s time is used wisely multi-tasking.
3 Tracker. I like the character because someone has to be responsible for pushing this technology into the market place. However not all ideas should be deployed. I offer two examples in support of this assertion; Photo Radar which was supposed to be so good for us and is now found on the rust of heap of mangled cars it was met to control, and secondly, the Taser another control technology which has resulted in numerous murder charges.
4 Social Justice is sorely lacking in any User Pay proposal because incomes and personal wealth vary widely within the population. When housing is unaffordable to so many and driving is made unaffordable by government legislation, then where are we as a society? Nowhere that’s where!
5 Freedom of movement is a fundamental principle upon which the City is planned and constructed. The freedom principle drives the design of transportation infrastructure, the design of mixed use buildings, the design of mixed use neighbourhoods and the inclusion of parking stalls in every project.
6 Criminality: Will a Road User Pay system lead to rampant cheating? Yes, in direct relation to the offence given. Will a Road User Pay system lead to attacks by criminal hackers and state actors? Yes, on everyone.
7 World War 3 is under way, try to keep your brain in good functioning order, that is the only tool of resistance you have. Good functioning order requires a NON POLITICAL educated and scientific world view of your own based on a moral and ethical code, and backed up by the courage of your convictions.
8 Pitching Propaganda. It is found everywhere on the social media platforms. The antidote is found on CBC, BBC and PBS.
9 Vancouver is Vancouver, it is not Singapore, London, Stockholm, Bergen, Trondheim or Toronto. These cities do not reflect the Vancouver argot, they are not us and they cannot teach us anything about who we are or how we should behave.
10 “Mobility Pricing” is a tax on the working poor.
“Vancouver is Vancouver, it is not Singapore, London, Stockholm, Bergen, Trondheim or Toronto. These cities do not reflect the Vancouver argot, they are not us and they cannot teach us anything about who we are or how we should behave.”
This is the kind of argument that people use when they can find no logical arguments to support their thesis. Yes, every city is different. Does this mean that we can’t learn from the experience of other cities?
“… a tax on the working poor”
Surely this depends on how road pricing is implemented. Ditto for many of your other objections. If we don’t do a thorough evaluation of road pricing, how can we make any decisions on whether or not to implement it?
Finally, a logical extension of unfettered mobility for all is that gasoline and transit should be free. Why do you not object to gasoline pricing? Venezuela tried the concept of almost free gasoline and look what happened there.
The Vancouver argot is but one of ten arguments put forth, you are disputing your own statements.
Are you suggesting that the poor in their clunkers should get a free pass? How will we decide who is too poor to pay and who can afford to pay? Is not this the basic problem of user pay schemes?
Given your remarks I would add a further issue area #11: Road User Pay is a strategy to constrain car use, it has no other purpose.
I am suggesting that at a minimum all 10 issue areas outlined need to be addressed in any evaluation.
The logic extension you put forth (as illogical as it is) is yours not mine. Not relevant to a discussion on a user pay proposal.
thanks for your comments.
It must become expensive for it to work. The more it costs to drive the better for society. The NDP will make it happen.
Driving used to be a special privilege for those that has plenty of money. Then along came Henry Ford and produced a car that even his workers could afford. That was the big mistake.
Now the NDP is going to get these less wealthy drivers off the road again. The poor will not be able to drive but the rich will.