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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/347582
BCBusInEss.CA August 2014 BCBusiness 41 too something. The farther people live from the urban densities that are the mark of economically healthy cities, the more they're likely to see transit as just a social-services benefit, not a necessity. The transit numbers in B.C. reinforce that picture. Even though there is some form of transit in about 130 cities in B.C., 80 per cent of all transit trips happen in the Lower Mainland, home to half of B.C.'s population; out of the 385 million transit trips in the province last year, only 50 million were made by people in the rest of B.C. Who Foots the Transit Bill? But even that fundamental disconnect could be reduced if people actually understood who is getting what. At the moment, they don't—allowing almost everyone to feel aggrieved, resentful and ripped off. Provincial ministers say that Vancouver shouldn't be asking for favours from the hinterland. That, of course, puzzles those who understand how transportation is funded overall. "I could point out that it's my tax dollars that are helping pay for Kicking Horse Canyon," says Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, who spent the first half of 2014 overseeing the committee that developed the 10-year plan for tran- sit expansion (which includes a subway on Broadway to Arbutus, three light- rail lines in Surrey and a new Pattullo Bridge) that people in the Lower Main- land are supposed to approve (or not approve) the funding for next year in a transit referendum. Every time the question of money for transit comes up, it sets off a pitched bat- tle over who is getting what. But there is never a clear answer because of the very mixed bag of funding regimes. When it comes to roads all over the province—from the South Fraser Perim- eter Road in the Lower Mainland to the Highway 97 widening in the Okana- gan—all B.C. taxpayers pay the bills. Since people in the Lower Mainland pay slightly more than half of all the taxes in B.C., they're paying for northern high- ways every day. With transit, there's a two-track sys- tem. Outside the Lower Mainland, tran- sit in the 130 cities and towns where it operates is paid for through fares, local property taxes and provincial grants—about an even three-way split. (That last source, again, comes partly from Lower Mainland taxpayers, since it's from general revenue.) Inside the Lower Mainland, approximately a third of TransLink's $1.4-billion cost comes from fares, a quarter from property taxes, a quarter from fuel taxes and the remainder from other sources. Whenever mayors and the province start a new round of bun-throwing over transit funding, with mayors saying they need another source of money in addition to those three—something like, say, a regional sales tax, a vehicle levy, road pricing or, most recently, the car- bon-tax revenue—provincial transporta- tion ministers, dutifully briefed by their staff, bring up the dreaded hospital-tax issue as a way of driving home the point, one more time, that the Lower Main- land is getting an unfair advantage over the regions. That issue, in a nutshell: back in 1999, when TransLink was created in the lab- oratory (like Frankenstein's monster or Adam and Eve, take your pick), the province gave the region the power to jANuAry 2001 nDP transportation Minister Mike farnworth says the province won't pass the legislation to authorize a vehicle levy. mArCh 2003 the pitch to build a Richmond-Airport- Vancouver transit line begins. the province and mayors will spend almost two years fight- ing over whether transLink should pony up $400 million for it. It's approved in December 2004 in an 8-4 vote. mArCh 2009 new transLink CEO tom Prendergast starts lobbying for new sources of revenue to provide $450 million a year for transit improve- ments. By July, transportation Minister shirley Bond has said no. jANuAry 2011 transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom agrees to let transLink increase fuel taxes from 15 cents to 17 cents a litre. Other revenue sources seem to be up for negotiation. mArCh 2012 Premier Christy Clark starts a long series of refusals to transLink proposals for more money, starting with no to a vehicle levy. $$