Who doesn’t agree we need a transportation authority?
Can a region of 420,000 survive with no coherent funding approach to urban transportation? Our political leaders in the thirteen sovereign neighbourhood municipalities seem to think so.
In 2014 the CRD commissioned and received a landmark consultant report called Regional Transportation Plan and a Transportation Feasibility Service Study mapping a way forward on this issue. The reports are well-researched, very well written and clear in their recommendations. It said establish an independent, well-funded transportation authority and let them get on with the job.
Since this report essentially recommended municipalities yield some authority (and money?) to improve a weak transportation infrastructure, it has gone straight to the shelf of reports labelled “Only if the province forces us.”
It does not have to be that way. The attached report Why do Capital Region taxpayers pay health district property taxes, while Metro Vancouver taxpayers do not?, written by Grumpy Taxpayer$ board member Colin Neilson, reveals a very different approach to this challenge in the Lower Mainland.
Our question is, why not here?
It is true that the 22 Lower Mainland municipalities came together to recommend a new structure. We wonder if they did so after the province offered to direct regional hospital taxes to a transportation authority then making up the lost revenues to the healthcare system. Which came first, the solution or the promised of provincial funding?
Meanwhile, in the Capital Region our fractured governance hides the extent to which the current urban transportation system fails to serve the needs of the community.
As in all other large cities in Canada people commute to work. The more extensive the transit system, the better it is for residents and employers.
Only one problem – housing needs analysis are carried out by municipalities on a five year cycle.
This system take into account the views of residents, but does it consider needs of employers, particularly those who draw 7,000 workers a day to the Peninsula? Not at all. And the same municipalities have yet to take any action on the above referenced report because their residents do not commute.
Grumpy$ report highlights fundamental differences on this issue between the two largest urban powerhouses in BC.
There is a system in the Lower Mainland which had provided leadership, governance and significant provincial funding. So, how much longer must ratepayers wait for a 2017 report to see the light of day and a vigorous debate in the Capital Region?
In 2022, Capital Region ratepayers contributed $24 Million in hospital charges, compared to zero dollars in the GVRD Metro municipalities, according to the provincial chart 703 (Column 5), reporting on Total Taxes and Charges .
READ MORE
Why do Capital Region taxpayers pay health district property taxes, while Metro Vancouver taxpayers do not? by Colin Neilson, Grumpy Taxpayer$, Sept. 2022.
B.C. Business Community Agrees: Greater Victoria First Up for Transportation Authority,Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, May 2017.
DECISION 2022: Governance Review decision delayed again to Sept. 29.
DECISION 2022:Taxpayers deserve straight answers.
DECISION 2022: Voter primer.