The Editor,
Re. “Transportation plans buckle under weight of politics” (Opinions, The Tri-City News, Oct. 27).
In his column last week, Mike Klassen must have been trying on his scary Halloween costume when he claimed he was “feeling a sense of gloom” about the region’s transportation struggles, blaming it all on “parochial politics.”
Spooky, but not accurate.
Mr. Klassen is right when he talks about the region’s transportation dysfunction but he is missing the mark when he identifies the Mayors’ Council as the culprit. In fact, it has been the region’s mayors leading the charge when it comes to working together on a comprehensive, long-term, region-wide plan to cut congestion, improve transit and invest in Metro Vancouver’s transportation network. Dysfunction can hardly be ascribed to the group that came together time and again with rigorously developed, widely supported plans, like we did in 2014 with the 10-Year Vision for Metro Vancouver Transit and Transportation.
Mr. Klassen needs to take off his costume so he can see more clearly where the “politically driven” dysfunction lies, and that is with the provincial government. For almost a decade, the province blocked a succession of proposals from the Mayors’ Council to improve our region’s roads, bridges, buses and trains.
It was the previous provincial government, not the region’s mayors, that forced a disastrous referendum that delayed getting started on the 10-Year Vision by two years, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in higher construction costs due to inflation. The previous provincial government never approved any of the mayors’ funding plans and neither the previous government nor the new one — so far — seems interested in fixing a broken governance model.
Following the misguided provincial referendum in 2015, the Mayors’ Council listened to what citizens said and got back to work to come up with a new approach to delivering the 10-Year Vision and its much needed improvements. We approved the first of three phases last November, using regionally generated revenue to fund 70% of the plan. We are now waiting on the new government in Victoria to respond to our proposal to reinvest a small portion of the new carbon tax that will be paid by Metro Vancouver residents and business back into our transportation network. This is needed to fund the last 10% of the Phase Two Plan of the 10-Year Vision, fairly and affordably.
This proposal to reinvest the new provincial carbon tax back into Metro Vancouver transportation is another example of the region’s mayors leading the way to find solutions to our most pressing problems.
The only constant in the process, over the years, is the unity of the mayors to plan and implement solutions. We are now, yet again, waiting on our partners in Victoria to show us that they are ready to lead as well.
I hope they are. Halloween has come and gone but Christmas is coming.
Greg Moore, Mayor, City of Port Coquitlam and Chair, Metro Vancouver
