Dueling sides in the transit referendum claim are making very different claims about whether increasing transit can take cars off the road.

The yes side says one out of every five cars won’t be on the road by the time their sweeping transportation plan is put into place, while the no side says it will barely make a difference.

“Overall, as a region, we will reduce congestion by 20 per cent,” said Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, adding that the region is expected to see 1 million more residents.

“With that comes hundreds of thousands of cars. Unless we look for alternate solutions, we’ll be in more and more gridlock,” Moore said.

But No campaigner Jordan Bateman says the reduced congestion is closer to 1.5 per cent.

“By voting yes you’re not getting rid of hundreds of thousands of cars, you’re getting rid of 23,000 cars,” Bateman said.

Both of them are basing their numbers off the same projections made by the Mayor’s Council while crafting their plan.

But there is a real life, recent example of how transit changed traffic – the Canada Line. The line was built in 2009 for the Vancouver Olympics, and now takes about 120,000 riders a day, according to Translink.

In the same time period, Ministry of Transportation numbers show traffic on the Oak Street Bridge has gone down 2.5 per cent.

By comparison, the traffic along Highway 99 south of the terminus of the Canada Line has gone up 0.5 per cent. And along the 91, with no rapid transit nearby, traffic volume has gone up 8.3 per cent.

“That makes logical sense,” said Moore. “If you put a good transit operation in, people will use it.”

Vancouver’s airport has also seen a dramatic change in how riders come to the airport since the Canada Line was built.

Between 2007 and 2012, the percentage of passengers taking transit increased from 4 per cent to 15 per cent – nearly 3 million riders.

That’s led to less traffic – and a faster way to the airport for passengers Val and Don Campbell, who spoke to CTV News at the Canada Line station at the airport en route to Singapore.

“We did plane, boat, train, we’re doing it all today. No car in any of that,” Val Campbell said.

Campbell, who is from the North Shore, says she’d want to see more ways new transit could change the way she gets around.

“We’re taxed to death already, but we use it, so I would probably vote yes,” she said.

Voters are being asked whether to approve a 0.5 per cent PST hike in exchange for $7.5 billion in transit improvements, including a new subway under Broadway, new LRT lines in surrey, 11 new rapid bus lines, and a new Patullo Bridge.