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Staying on track

The two-cent gas surcharge voted in Friday by the TransLink mayor's council was an unpleasant but necessary first step toward healing our transit system. It can't be the last.

The two-cent gas surcharge voted in Friday by the TransLink mayor's council was an unpleasant but necessary first step toward healing our transit system.

It can't be the last.

The levy, together with a supposedly temporary rise in property taxes, is meant to help pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in needed improvements, including expansion of SeaBus service to North Vancouver and Coquitlam's long-delayed Evergreen Line.

No one likes paying more for gas, especially when money's tight, but the alternative is worse.

In a growing region, improved transit is the only way to avoid snarled ports and highways -- problems that can't be solved by endlessly widening roads. It's also needed to contain sprawl and cushion the blow from oil prices, which have nowhere to go in coming decades but up.

For the plan to work, however, more steps must be taken. The mayors and the province have to work quickly to find fairer sources of revenue than the new property tax, which doesn't necessarily reflect a resident's ability to pay, and which, unlike the gas tax, can't be moderated through behaviour.

Municipalities have to focus growth along current and future transit corridors to boost ridership and curb increases in vehicle traffic, and TransLink's governance, with its unelected board and closed-door meetings, must be made more transparent to ensure accountability.

It's only through these difficult but necessary steps that we will avoid much greater pain in the future.