Voters who cast a No ballot in the Metro Vancouver transportation plebiscite were against a sales tax hike. But that doesn't mean they're against road and transportation improvements.
The ball is now in Premier Christy Clark's court to do something so the Lower Mainland doesn't become a laughingstock — a beautiful, gridlocked laughingstock.
While LNG is a nice pipe-dream economic driver for the future, what is necessary now to keep businesses investing is a credible transportation plan paid for by tax dollars that already exist in the system, augmented by road pricing and a mix of stick and carrot incentives to get people out of their cars.
Of course, these issues were always on Premier Clark's to-do list — they were, weren't they? — but she's going to have to sit down with the region's mayors and come up with a plan that is workable.
And by the way, the referendum was always a bad idea. Too bad we had to spend millions on it to get the answer we expected.
