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Libs not touting it in speeches, but policy position is that referendum still needed for regional share of Broadway, Surrey lines

April 27th, 2017 · 10 Comments

In the 2013 election, Premier Christy Clark was quite vocal about requiring a referendum for any new tax, fee or whatever that the mayors wanted to help pay for the regional share of transit.

This time, candidates have stayed away from that.

However, the Liberal Party made it clear — in its response to the TransLink mayors’ council questionnaire — that a referendum will still be required when mayors are trying to decide this time how to come up with the rest of their share for the 10-year, $7.5-billion plan for transit improvements. The feds and province have kicked in about $5 billion at this point and the mayors have approved some property-tax and fare increases, but none of that is enough to cover the full bill.

(My Globe story on this in today’s paper here.)

The party also said it will fund one-third of the Pattullo Bridge as long as there is a “strong business case.” I always thought the strong business case was that the bridge is about to fall into the river, but I guess I know nothing.

I couldn’t understand why that wording would suddenly appear until I remembered that the Libs also promised a cap on all tolls in the region. And the planning for the bridge had always factored in tolls. In fact, at a transit panel that I moderated recently, TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond said that the one thing TransLink would do differently to avoid the problems the Port Mann Bridge has had with finances is to ensure that no money has to come out of the operations budget to help make the mortgage payments on the bridge.

So, if the possibility for revenue from tolling the bridge is now limited, that means TransLink will have to develop a new business case.

Anyway, transit planners must be praying for an end to this election campaign, before any more little grenades can be thrown their way.

As I noted last week, that started with the two major parties competing to reduce or eliminate tolls altogether, to the dismay of mayors and rational policy-makers.

 

 

 

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