DRIVERS won't be paying to cross the North Shore's bridges any time soon, but that doesn't mean they'll avoid road levies altogether, according to comments this week from the provincial government and the region's transit authority.
Speaking after a meeting of the TransLink mayors' council Wednesday, Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom said his government had no plans to put tolls on the Lower Mainland's existing bridges to help pay for expansion of the transit system, an idea that had circulated in recent months as the transit authority casts about for ways to meet growing demand.
"Right now we have a tolling policy and there's no intention to change it," he said, referring to the province's practice of tolling only new bridges and leaving at least one free crossing on every route.
The pledge does not mean drivers will be entirely off the hook, however, according to council chairman and District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton, who was at the Wednesday meeting.
In coming weeks, the mayors' council, tasked with hatching a new funding model for TransLink, will be looking for an alternative to a proposed property tax increase designed to make up a $30 million transit funding shortfall next year. They are aiming to send it to the province for approval in the spring. That alternative could include a road toll of some kind - just not one applied specifically to existing bridges.
"What you're trying to do is introduce policies that give people choice," said Walton, speaking to the North Shore News Thursday. "Trying to find something that's fair, it's going to be tough because everybody has a different take on what's fair and what's not."
Last year, faced with a tightening budget and a growing ridership, TransLink concluded it needed an additional $70 million on top of its existing annual revenue to maintain and expand the system. In October, the mayors voted to add another two cents to the region's existing gas taxes - expected to cover about $40 million of that shortfall - and to make up the remainder with a temporary rise in property tax, due to kick in in 2013.
But that added property tax is something the mayors want to scrap if they can, according to Walton, and not just for political reasons. The levy would be unfair, he said, because a taxpayer's contribution would be in no way proportional to the amount of strain that payer put on the system.
The mayors don't want to jack up transit fares either, he said, as it would just chase riders off buses, and the newly rejected bridge toll plan would be unfair to communities like the North Shore, whose commuters are travelling just a short distance into downtown.
Even the gas tax isn't great, said Walton, since revenue from that levy drops as prices at the pump rise and people buy less fuel - and just as it is costing more to fill buses' tanks.
Rather, Walton would like to see some kind of distance levy take the place of both the proposed property tax and the gas tax, whereby drivers pay more the farther they travel.
"You can encourage people to use roads and (other) facilities at low-demand times," he said. "They're freeing up capacity in the system and they should be rewarded."
There's no guarantee a plan along those lines - or any other in fact - will come to fruition before the property tax comes into effect, however, since it would have to be approved by the province, and there's an election around the corner.
The mayors nonetheless remain optimistic, he said.
"We're asking the province to sit down with us and talk about some of these broader, high-level strategies," said Walton. "We're all very hopeful that some legislation will go through (before next year)."
