Kelly Sinoski writes in the Sun:
The B.C. Liberals are expected to pledge $246 million Thursday to expand Metro Vancouver’s transit system, but property taxes and transit fares will likely have to go up to cover TransLink’s contribution to the plan. . .
. . . Fassbender said the provincial funding was approved after mayors suggested they could cover TransLink’s $124-million share of costs through existing funding sources, such as raising property taxes and fares and selling surplus properties. He would not go into further details, saying that was up to the mayors. TransLink is authorized to collect a certain amount of property taxes each year for transportation.
Mayors acknowledged they have pitched a mix of existing and new funding sources, such as a vehicle levy or regional carbon tax, to fund transportation.
“The fact that they are prepared to look at that is a step in the right direction,” Fassbender said. “My understanding from the mayors’ plan is they will be able to meet the regional share through existing funding sources.”
Once that’s done, he added, the parties can work together on new funding sources, such as creating developer fees for high density along transit corridors. Municipalities already collect charges from developers for amenities such as pools, parks and affordable housing, and have pitched the idea of transportation fees as a way to inject much-needed cash into the beleaguered transit system.
This is 33% of the expected amount needed in the first round. It appears to set the funding formula in place (50 – 33 – 17), which should carry over into the distribution of the much larger Federal funding now on the table.
If this initial round ($124M) is financed by the Mayors through existing funding sources, I expect that funding for the next, much larger round will have to include other, newer sources — perhaps some of them under Provincial control. There is a hint here — in a mention of “transportation fees”.
Meanwhile — just how interested is the public?
Fassbender’s announcement coincides with a new survey by Angus Reid Global that found 90 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents believe a regional multi-year transportation plan should be rolled out immediately to improve housing affordability. The survey suggests two in five residents say transportation is one of the two most important issues facing the region today, second only to housing affordability.
About 88 per cent of those surveyed are worried that high housing prices in Metro are exacerbating regional transportation issues because it forces people to live farther away from work, family and friends, while 39 per cent say they are frustrated getting around the region — whether they drive or take transit — and believe the experience is only going to get worse over the next five years.
Funding transit in 2016. Bad news.
Responding to misinformed transit enthusiasts who are, and have been, promoting their antediluvian concept of urban development in Metro Vancouver back one hundred years:
Am I the only one speaking in favour of a future city and not just a one hundred year old, or more, TX system beyond Metro Vancouver’s means.
There is another option: a future city of incremental self-sustaining . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/1yorkshirelad/vancouver.re-boot/Vancouver.re-boot.html
. . . urban villages.
These conventional urban city gossip-istas, so prevalent on PT, speak only of unrelenting repayable DEBT!
What a sad commentary on the local academic and development community.
In traditional village life, most work would not be specialized (everyone’s a farmer), the few jobs that are would be inherited, and the wife’s work would be at home. It’s easy in this situation for people to live and work in a stable, compact community.
City life is characterized by specialization. Specialized skills are only useful to a small number of employers. (Indeed skilled workers often move across the country in search of suitable work.) It may be possible for one person to live close to work: but when both members of a couple, it is likely that one will have to commute regardless.
Because occupations are not inherited, this also moves workers away from their families. We tend to imagine workers as being in the prime of their lives, moved away from and independent of home. But much of our lives are not like that. The problem is compounded because we think of work as wage labour: when in fact much of the day-to-day work we do is largely outside the market. Family and community provide child care, elder care, emotional care (often forgotten but absolutely critical) and a large part of the social safety net (as we see when young people experiencing hardship move back with their parents).
The typical nuclear family needs access to two unrelated specialized jobs, and for efficiency and well-being they also need access to two families of inl-alws (who may also be connected to specialized jobs). How do you plan to achieve that in your compact urban villages?
“(everyone’s a farmer)“! Lord of the manor, servants, gardeners, stable boys, coachmen, baker, butcher, stonemason, builder, publican, soldier, sailor, rat catcher etc etc etc
and yes farmers too . . .
Urban villages are an ideal, but they are also an urban planning exercise in the absence of economic understanding, especially the work-home dynamic. A major employer relocating somewhere else will kybosh even the best laid urban plans.
Bravo. A tiny step in the right direction. Better would be substantially raised parking fees in residential neighborhoods – as opposed to mere car independent property taxes – and road & bridge tolls.
A total disgrace is the lack of funding by developers for new transit – a COMPLETE NOBRAINER. You add people, you need more transit. it is so obvious why was this not done 20 years ago in Burnaby, New West, Coquitlam, N-Van or PoCo ? So this levy too makes TOTAL SENSE.
It takes a tough knucklehead like Fassbender to drill this into the socialist mayors brains !!!!! BRAVO !!!!
Because you want none of the advantages of living in a city while living in a city?
This is Plan B. Is anyone surprised it’s an unimaginative assortment of property tax increases? Let that sink in with the brain trust who voted ‘No’ to a negligible sales tax uptick.
No was the correct choice as the plan was so bad and the mayors did nothing in their power to increase funding although they could. Better is property tax increases and certainly higher fares as now proposed. Better would be road tolls & tolled bridges as well as parking fee increases for residential neighborhoods and levies for developers.
Fassbender would make a great premier as he is such a common sense hard charging politician beating the mayors into shape ! Bravo.
C$246M is nothing: just enough to keep the hoi poloi from up chucking. Vancouver does not have a large enough economy to indulge this nonsense!
According to my math, this is $730-740M. $124M from the cities, $246M from the province, the remainder from the feds.
Granted, we knew about most of this money already. It’s generally going to things without a lead time. Translink couldn’t just go out and hire a subway builder tomorrow, and the feds want immediate stimulus.
So, the money goes to NewFlyer for buses, to shipyards for a seabus, to builders for station and depot upgrades and to engineering companies doing the initial design of the big projects. It’s not that complicated…
In a couple years, once planned, the big projects will be funded. The feds want jobs now for money announced this year. They don’t want to announce a bunch of money and say in 4 years we’ll start getting to see the stimulus working.
“According to my math, this is $730-740M. $124M from the cities, $246M from the province, the remainder from the feds.” No no no! It’s just more debt on top of debt on top of more debt . . .
Of course we must interact personally but not
as much as we once did! Welcome to the internet.
He says about the fastest growing economy in Canada…
“. . . fastest growing economy in Canada . . .” Errrrrrrrr by absentee, Chinese fueled empty real esate inflation! Some economy!
The Canadian economy is worth almost US$2 trillion a year. We can afford decent public transit in all our major cities.
Good morning MB
It isn’t a matter of what we can afford, it is a matter of how we best use our resources.
TX on this blog has become an obsession.
Olympic Village shows we can do somethings right: i.e. a mix of compact uses in close proximity (out of bed, don trousers, gulp a cuppa, out the door, brief exhilliarating walk, in the door and, hey presto, you’re contributing to the common weal). How come it took so long?
PS We sure as hell cannot afford the debt our new PM is about to saddle us with!
I do agree about the OV. It’s a precedent-setter and a pleasure to see. Those who are within walking distance (or a short bus or ferry ride) of work and schools for their kids are very lucky. But it’s only one tiny dot on the Metro map. Even with hundreds of conjoined OVs covering the 820 km2 of the Metro urban area, people will need to move around for work, schools and housing. Most of that moving is currently done by car and is dominant in the suburbs, and that’s not sustainable from several angles, including through public finances.
Ten billion in public debt, not counting debt servicing and life cycle operations. That’s the total cost of local freeway expenditures over the last decade with another $3.5B to come shortly for Massey, all of which nearly doubles the $7.5 billion value of the mayor’s plan mostly for transit — which incidentally has pretty good permanent operations cost recovery capability. Transit is cheaper at moving people than freeways, but then again we need those mid-rise walkable villages to make it work to its full extent, as well as to emphasize walking as the No. One choice. That of course means we need to redesign our cities.
There’s a lot of work to be done. Rather than taking the easy route and criticize the transit supporters and urbanists here ad nauseum, why not put your decades of experience to work and compose some realistic urban design plans to create self-contained villages in SW Vancouver (and other RS zones) and deep Surrey, Maple Ridge, Chilliwack and other sprawling suburbs where they need them most? How would they be linked together across the protected ALR? What would the public financing of these villages look like (note the OV’s controversial and expensive birth)? How does one control the inevitable land value increase to keep housing affordable? How would the villages relate to the existing high densities of downtown, Central Broadway and the regional town centres? How could the villages influence town centre planning and architecture to change?
If the goal is to convert the Metro to a series of villages, then we need to discover how to do that and keep it working economically. Until we do, then the status quo will reign.