VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Metro Vancouver mayors have fired back with a plan for how they think the public transit funding shortfall should be dealt with.
The Mayors’ Council and the province have been trying to agree on a long-term strategy for how to get TransLink’s finances back in order.
In the release, the mayors say they have considered all options for funding the transportation system.
“A small incremental addition to the sales tax. The intent of that is to improve the movement of goods and people and transit,” says Richard Walton, chair of the council.
The sales tax would be no more than 0.5%.
Walton says people who don’t use transit may not realize how the service is of benefit to them. “It’s not possible for anyone to take themselves out of the equation and just because you don’t take transit and you only drive doesn’t mean you’re not dependent upon efficient goods and people throughout the region,” says Walton.
BC’s Transportation Minister Mary Polak says it’s too early to support a bump in sales tax without details and consultation with the public. “We’ve all seen what happens when you go to the public with a new taxation idea and you haven’t done the work with the public. For them to understand what it’s for, understand the potential benefit, and to build the kind of support for that… it’s really not detailed to understand yet whether or not it would be supportable.”
In other words, Polak says there is still work that needs to be done. “We’ve asked the mayors to form a more specific consensus around immediate funding needs. For example, the Broadway-Corridor, SkyTrain expansion in Surrey. We need to get down to consensus around which one would go first.”
Walton is meeting with the minister next week.
Two other short-term recommendations include a vehicle levy and using carbon tax revenue.
Longer term options are mentioned as well including the exploration of land value capture. They also mention introducing a comprehensive road pricing system.
Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation reaction
The head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in BC says “enough is enough” when it comes to increasing the sale tax.
Jordan Bateman says people aren’t happy with the HST, and this is no different.
“Now to come back to taxpayers and say, ‘Well, we want another half a point to fund TransLink’ when there’s absolutely no link between TransLink and what you buy in a store, it’s ridiculous.”
He’s hoping the transportation minister says “no” to what he calls another “tax grab.”
“We just fought a four-year campaign on the HST — on a sales tax because people, taxpayers, were sick and tired of paying more in taxes.”
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Why can’t we use the existing Carbon tax to fund these kind of projects? Isn’t it what it was for when it got introduced way back? We don’t need any more new tax or levy of any kind here in BC or Canada, we have been taxed to death already!!
Why don’t they scrap the Transit cops & RCMP in the GVRD and replace it with a Regional police force to save money and increase efficiency? Oh wait.. that would offend the unions and it means they actually have to work for their pay cheque!
Why can’t they fire all those Translink board and executives and let it run by a Private/public Joint ventures? Same goes for the BC Ferries.
Why can’t they increase the fuel efficiency of the bus by using smaller size bus instead of these big ugly square box that a lot of times are running only half full? Why do we need to build more skytrain and not street level Light Rail System which is easier and cheaper to buid & maintain.
But of course, it would be too easy to think of all these ideas. Obviously, we will need to put away millions of dollars into study, research and more research which only seems to benefit the Consulting firms!
we pay too much taxes in B.C right now .there is no job at people will expense less .what is going on . vancouver is gong too be very big R.
Few people believe Translink is a well run organization. It may be true or it may be what we are used to hearing from the media. Hard to tell. There is no question that everyone benefits when more people take the bus. Drivers benefit because roads are not congested, transit users benefit because there are better routes and better serviced areas and even cyclists benefit if they can use transit for the long haul and finish the last mile on a bike. Translink is not a very transparent organization, so until everyone believes the money is being well spent, it will be hard to squeeze more from taxpayers.
I can’t think of an organization in the world that is as bad at collections (fare payments) as Translink. When it can operate like everyone else on the planet and get paid for providing a service, I might listen to Translink’s long-winded speeches and please for more handouts. Totally bloated, corrupt bureaucracy.
The best thing would be to cancel all future expansion of the Skytrain till a later date.
What a mess. So the solution is to just squeeze even more money out of an already over burdened, overtaxed population? Maybe, just MAYBE, if Translink set up the transit system so that it is relevant to today’s world so that people could actually use it instead of taking 3 or 4 times longer just to get to work than driving, then perhaps people may decide to use it.
Are the managers at Translink still getting company cars on the taxpayers dime? Why can’t they use transit for company business like the rest of the us are expected to?
Pretty soon it will be like North Korea… everyone will be walking or riding a bike while the Translink people and government officials are the the only ones driving by on the empty roads.
Hey TransLink… no more money until you clean house and re-organize your corporate structure first. Once you’ve done that, which should save millions (including scrapping the overpaid transit “police”) then you can start looking at other ways of funding before raping the taxpayer wallets. i.e. Corporate Sponsorship of Skytrain stations and other TransLink-funded things.
Enough is Enough!
(We also need to eliminate the over 20 municipalities that we have on the Lower Mainland. We don’t need anymore than 3, 2 would be better. Having this many mayors & councils and their multiple departments for such a small population is completely unsustainable. The millions and millions of dollars this would save could fund transit for decades.)