Everything from bus fares to road tolls is on the table as an independent commission on mobility pricing gets underway in Metro Vancouver.
The commission, which was unveiled Tuesday by the TransLink Mayors' Council, is tasked with addressing issues around traffic congestion, transportation funding and pricing fairness through a number of recommendations that are expected to be delivered next spring.
"The current system of road tolling and bridges is broken. We need a new approach," Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said.
Officials chose Allan P. Seckel, current CEO of Doctors of B.C., to chair the commission with high-profile NDP MLA Joy MacPhail as vice-chair.
Serving as executive director is Daniel Firth, an internationally recognized expert on mobility pricing who came to B.C. from Stockholm, Sweden, where a congestion tax was introduced on vehicles entering the city centre 10 years ago.
Firth said the tax, which was approved by the public in a referendum, resulted in a 10 per cent reduction in traffic, but stressed that the independent commission will be exploring all possibilities to find strategies that make sense for the Lower Mainland.
"The role of the commission is going to be crucial to making this work. It's going to be crucial to understanding what the region needs and making sure we have a made-in-Metro Vancouver solution to these problems," Firth told reporters.
"It doesn't take big changes to make traffic movement better,” he added.
Mobility pricing is a wide-ranging term that includes tolls, fuel taxes, insurance rates, transit fares and taxi charges, and Robertson said it's far too early to speculate on who will be paying what.
Firth also assured there will be plenty of consultation before the commission thinks about making any recommendations.
"We're to engage very widely with the people of Metro Vancouver, with stakeholders, with businesses, with all kinds of groups that are going to give us the information we need to make good decisions and to make good recommendations," he said.
But the Mayors' Council emphasized that there is a need for new solutions. According to TransLink, traffic is already on the rise, with some key routes taking up to 15 minutes longer than they did a decade ago.
Meanwhile, there frustration among some motorists that tolls are applied to the Port Mann Bridge and Golden Ears Bridge instead of being more evenly distributed on all crossings.
For more information on the commission and on public meetings being held across Metro Vancouver, visit its official website.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Shannon Paterson
