The constitution places cities under provincial jurisdiction (along with health care), and look where that has gotten us. ‘Patchwork quilt’ comes to mind. I contend that only a foolish city or provincial government would block or turn down billions for transit under a contractual, negotiated deal directly with the feds even if its’s outside the constitution.

The feds could demand cities build denser, energy self-sufficient transit-oriented communities with urban design guidelines and agree to be audited on their progress over, say, a decade in return for supplying the transit and perhaps some grants for self-sufficient energy projects (eg. solar-assisted district heating plants). If a city balks at eliminating the zoning that creates single-family sprawl the gobbling up of vast tracts of agricultural land, or a province says get out of our constitutional jurisdiction, then simply withdraw the offer, and explain the environmental and economic consequences of doing so.

The reality is that the local draw on a federal contribution of a billion dollars is very low.

The value of your property has no relation to the amount you use the transportation system. Someone who has moved out to the edges to find a cheaper property but continues to drive to work will certainly use the system a lot more than someone who can afford to live downtown and walk to work.

The problem that we face is that we do not have enough resources to provide a good transit system – and property owners are highly resistant to paying more. In fact when property prices increase, revenues don’t follow as the rules of municipal finance do not permit that. Although Translink has done well out of property tax that does not mean it is an equitable or efficient system.

I thought I had been pretty outspoken about my preference for user pay – especially as applies to road users. Any kind of subsidy distorts the market – and right now we have far too much road use and parking and not nearly enough transit. And I would lay the blame on the use of property tax.

Because of the way that property prices work, and the fact that no one regulates how much anyone spends on transportation (as opposed to the rules regulations that surround mortgages) we over consume transport services. Especially since we do not pay to drive: we absorb most driving costs as fixed fees that do not vary no matter how much we drive – so unsurprisingly, we have an incentive to get as much use as we can out of our cars.

To add to our woes, the gas tax is charged by volume not price – so the more people do the right thing, the less money we have for transit. Kinda dumb huh?

I can’t recall a post from you on this topic, care to elaborate? Since people live in the GVRD one way or another, it would imply that people living in more expensive properties would pay Translink relatively more than those living in inexpensive properties. This would also be implied in the rental rates so there is no escaping it unless if you’re homeless.

Are you suggesting that Translink be funded out of the provincial general revenue fund? Or make it even more user-pay than it is currently?

Talk about doublespeak. If you shift from a parking stall tax to a property tax, it’s still a tax increase. If hypothetically, the TransLink board were allowed to replace the parking stall tax with an increase in the fuel tax, would he be saying it’s not a new tax?

The Canada Line and the Golden Ears Bridge are costing much more because of the fallout of the bundled mortgages crisis.

But with a fixed price contract, those increased costs are in the hands of the private contractors. The government authorities are not running around trying to reallocate additonal taxpayers’ money for the projects – like was done for the Convention Centre.
Sure, the private contractors will have to make up that money some how, but with fares and tolls set by the governmental authorities, they’ll have to do it some other way.
Conceivably, the private contractor could go bankrupt, but as they did at the start of the project, they can raise additional capital, and if you criticize that the additional capital was from a couple of pension funds, those pension funds would analyse their investment choices before investing. They could invest in a shopping mall, for example (think ICBC investing in Surrey Place Mall and building an office tower, now hopefully the spark for Central Surrey), so I don’t see why they can’t invest in a project that will have substantial public benefits if the number look good. Besides, InTransitBC has too much riding on this – their contribution to the project is $700million (more than any single governmental entity).