Civic election outcome will determine road tolls for downtown Vancouver

A tolling station for Singapore's Electronic Road Pricing (ERP). (Dr David Sing/Shutterstock)

Transport pricing — also known as mobility pricing or road tolls — for accessing the downtown Vancouver peninsula by vehicle is one of the largest policy directions debated by the current Vancouver City Council over the past four years.

Ahead of the October 2022 civic election, there appears to be a new veil of disinformation that amounts to an outright attempt to downplay the intentions of both City of Vancouver staff and City Council and disregard much-needed context over the debates and decisions made to date.

For a potential policy that overwhelmingly impacts the accessibility and economic viability of downtown Vancouver, the business and cultural hub of BC, this debate is worthy of a closer look.

The idea for transport pricing was first proposed as a key pillar by City staff in their Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) report in October 2020.

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Transport pricing is one of the 32 individual projects and strategies that make up CEAP, which was triggered by City Council’s decision in early 2019 to approve a member motion by OneCity councillor Christine Boyle to declare a “climate emergency,” and direct City staff to come back to City Council with a proposed action plan of projects to meet newly established 2030 goals.

So how important is transport pricing to CEAP? In their report, City staff notably titled this policy to be “The Game Changer Action” — essentially the flagship and paramount policy of CEAP. It is the crown jewel, the most important of CEAP strategies and initiatives.

Of the estimated $500 million combined cost of all strategies and initiatives under CEAP, transport pricing’s implementation cost was pegged at $250 million or 50% of the CEAP total. The City anticipated it could generate between $50 million and $80 million in annual net revenue after covering the one-time implementation costs and annual operating costs of the transport pricing system.

Over three public meeting dates in November 2020, City Council heard from over 70 speakers on the entire CEAP policy, and most of the time spent by public speakers and City Council’s subsequent debate was over just one particularly heated CEAP item: transport pricing.

On November 17, 2020, after hearing from all public speakers and concluding debates on CEAP and the proposed amendments, City Council spent nearly 30 minutes individually voting on each and every project and strategy under CEAP.

Transport pricing, listed as recommendation D in City staff’s CEAP report, was approved after amendments.

But if it were not for a major amendment by then-independent city councillor Rebecca Bligh (now seeking re-election under the ABC Vancouver party), City staff would have gone full throttle on implementing transport pricing by “2025 or sooner,” with a phase of key planning work completed by late 2022.

Prior to Bligh’s amendment, City staff’s precise wording for recommendation D was: “THAT Council direct staff to develop a Vancouver Transport Pricing Strategy and work toward implementation within the Metro Core by 2025.” The intention by City staff was very clear.

Map of Metro Vancouver’s Metro Core, defined as the downtown Vancouver peninsula and the Central Broadway Corridor. (City of Vancouver)

Currently, there is a bit of a kerfuffle between Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party and Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver party over whether road tolls in and out of the city centre is a real possibility.

In a press release on August 29, 2022, Forward Together claimed “Rebecca Bligh, his own ABC team member, was the councillor who asked staff to study the tax in the first place.”

But Bligh’s major amendments to City staff’s recommendation D were strategically intended to damper the certainty of the policy, slow down the process towards implementation, and force the municipal government to perform its due diligence — weigh all tradeoffs and impacts, and conduct major public consultation.

“Although I do support the vast majority of this [CEAP] report and do believe its recommendations are moving the city towards the steps required to make significant reductions in our carbon emissions and to fight climate change, I have concerns with committing to transport pricing in recommendation D. What we’ve heard loud and clear from equity seeking groups, the business sector, and education sector… they’re saying hold the brakes,” said Bligh during debate on November 17, 2020.

She was also at odds with how transport pricing was being proposed during the immense economic challenges of the pandemic at the time, bluntly saying “it is absolutely sending the wrong message” to struggling residents and businesses.

For these reasons, Bligh argued that transport pricing was too big to be considered as a streamlined item under CEAP — that it should instead be its own strategy and initiative.

During that meeting, City Council voted 6-4 in the exact same way twice in support of recommendation D of transport pricing — once for Bligh’s amendment, and again during the final vote on the item specifically. Those in support entailed Stewart, Bligh, Boyle, and Green Party councillors Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, while those voting in opposition entailed NPA councillor Melissa De Genova, TEAM councillor Colleen Hardwick, and ABC councillors Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung.

Just over a week after CEAP was greenlighted, City staff presented City Council with the municipal government’s draft 2021 budget, which set aside $1.5 million over two years to plan the transport pricing scheme. This budget figure was established by City staff.

Forward Together’s press release on August 29, 2022 stated all three incumbent ABC city councillors — Bligh, Lisa Dominato, and Sarah Kirby-Yung — voted in support of spending $1.5 million for planning, specifically noting their approval in vote No. 06776 on item L. But it should be greatly emphasized that this vote on December 10, 2020, was not specifically on the $1.5 million for transport pricing but the entire 2021 capital budget of $771 million, of which transport pricing is just one of many components. Context is needed given that the big umbrella of item L includes affordable housing, childcare, public parks, utilities, and maintenance works. Only Hardwick voted against item L.

Even if an amendment were proposed at the time to remove the $1.5 million for transport pricing in the 2021 capital budget, it is unlikely the amendment would pass given the majority support of City Council for transport pricing.

Moreover, the practice of setting aside $1.5 million — a substantial sum for a planning effort — to explore something that is merely a “make-work project,” according to one media report, raises more questions than answers. It does not pass the smell test.

The capital budget stipulated that $1.5 million for transport pricing includes $700,000 to hire a dedicated City staff team and external consultant team, and $800,000 to “complete stakeholder engagement” and report back to City Council on the feasibility study seeking further recommendations.

In a May 2022 internal memo by City staff to specifically update City Council on the progress on the transport pricing file, it was stated that the municipal government had completed a bidding process and hired a consultant team in September 2021, comprised of transportation planning firms Mott Macdonald and KI Squared and public relations firm Lucent Quay.

The same recent memo also noted that public consultation on transport pricing scenarios will take place in 2023 and 2024, ahead of City Council’s final decision.

In early 2023, after the civic election, the new makeup of City Council will be provided with a report by City staff with a summary of the work completed so far on transport pricing. At this juncture, the implementation for transport pricing has shifted to no earlier than 2026.

The City of Vancouver’s website also has a dedicated page on transport pricing with information such as the latest timeline towards implementation, which greatly suggests the concept is more than just hypothetical.

City staff’s preliminary concept initially called for transport pricing for the entire Metro Core area — the combined area of the downtown Vancouver peninsula, South False Creek, and Central Broadway Corridor — but the latest indications show they are now focusing only on the downtown peninsula.

While there have been some suggestions that there is no City staff dedicated to the transport pricing project, that does not appear to be true; since September 2021, the municipal government has had at least one City staff on this file, and their job title literally includes the term “Transport Pricing.” As of this week, the individual is also actively listed in the municipal government’s directory of employees.

Congestion charge toll station in London, UK. (Shutterstock)

Then there is the jurisdictional argument to downplay the behind-the-scenes work on transport pricing, given that road tolls would necessitate the approval of the provincial government. This hurdle has been brought up repeatedly for the past two years, and the notion raises even more questions on why the municipal government has directed $1.5 million to study transport pricing if it cannot be legally implemented.

During the November 17, 2020, public meeting, then-City manager Sadhu Johnston told City Council there are potential ways the municipal government could circumvent the required approval at the provincial level.

“There are certain ways we can do it. There are tools that we need from the province to do it in a different way, depending on how the council of the day wanted to pursue mobility pricing,” said Johnston, specifically bringing up app-based technologies or additional curbside interventions when a vehicle pulls up to the curb — on top of existing paid parking.

“You could use parking and the ability to use the curbside, which is the power we currently have. There are ways to do this now. Is this the best way to do it? Is that the way council wants to do it? These are the types of things we’d need to evaluate. There are ways that this type of arrangement can be done with the powers we have now. That might not be the ideal way to do it, but that’s the kind of analysis we’d need to pursue.”

The municipal government’s leadership, both elected officials and bureaucrats, have yet to walk back on the statements made by Johnston, who left the City in early 2021.

This particular municipal government is also not known to be shy about testing its limits, straying outside of its traditional responsibilities and jurisdiction.

Above all, transport pricing comes on the heels of the big blow to CEAP, after City Council’s October 2021 decision to kill mandatory parking permits for all residential streets across Vancouver. The plan was to implement the mandatory parking permits starting in February 2022, with annual fees initially starting at $45 for all vehicles, plus an annual pollution charge of up to $1,000 for newer higher polluting vehicles. City staff went on record stating that the base fee could be hiked to “market” levels within a few years of implementation.

Stewart cast the deciding “No” vote that put an end to the controversial plan for mandatory parking permits.

Mandatory parking permits and the annual pollution charge combined would have generated net revenue of between $40 million and $68 million for the municipal government over the first four-year period from 2022 to 2025.

Without the mandatory parking permits and the annual pollution charge, the City has already lost its second-largest planned revenue source to support CEAP’s carbon emission and transportation mode shift goals and the associated costs of the 32 projects and strategies. Losing mandatory parking permits and the annual pollution charge may amount to losing a battle, but the scenario of transport pricing collapsing too would equate to losing the war in this political minefield.

Acknowledging the immense revenue deficit to carry out CEAP, in December 2021, City Council approved Stewart’s member motion to enact a Climate Levy — a new additional property tax category to fund CEAP. It is estimated the tax will raise $9 million annually starting in 2022.

A tolling station for Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing (ERP). (Shutterstock)

Moreover, it goes without saying that CEAP sits on a very high pedestal for the climate-focused municipal government, and the overarching goals and intent of CEAP are of course highly laudable.

Ever since City Council approved CEAP in late 2020, City staff have been returning to City Council with detailed policy reports that check off the boxes of the 32 projects and strategies, mainly items that deal with regulation changes that carry little or zero financial cost to the municipal government.

For example, in May 2022, City Council approved City staff’s detailed plan under CEAP requiring all new multi-family homes to include mechanical air cooling and superior air filtration as a mitigation measure for the warming climate and the growing occurrence of wildfire smoke. This policy begins in 2025.

As well, the City is mandating the conversion of gas heating to electrification for homes undergoing major renovations, and introducing carbon reduction limits for large commercial and residential buildings.

That same month, City Council approved the detailed plan for the CEAP strategy of encouraging all gas stations and large-sized commercial pay parking lots to install electric-battery car charging equipment. Non-compliant gas stations and parking businesses will face a significantly higher $10,000 annual business license renewal fee starting in 2025.

The City has also acted on CEAP’s various strategies for improved accessibility to charging equipment in residential, non-residential, and curbside locations.

Regardless of where your position sits on transport pricing, it is worth paying attention to who is clearly saying they support the policy, who is against it, and who is silent, perhaps playing coy.

All signs point to transport pricing returning to the new makeup of City Council next year, and it will be one of the biggest policy decisions they will be asked to make at several junctures in their term through 2026. This should be a major civic election issue leading up to voting day on October 15, 2022.

Ken Sim’s ABC party has come right out of the gate opposing transport pricing.

Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party avoided answering the question directly for weeks, instead choosing to retaliate against Sim’s messaging of “Kennedy’s Road Tax” and calling it a fake issue. Finally, in a tweet on Tuesday, the Mayor wrote “Let me be clear: I do not support this tax.”

At this stage of the campaign, the other major parties — Green Party, OneCity, Progress Vancouver, COPE, NPA, and TEAM — have yet to weigh in on transport pricing, although the positions of their incumbent candidates are well known.

Interestingly, TEAM has already released its full platform, including the major transportation policy of holding a city-wide consultation on the UBC SkyTrain extension and comparing it with other alternative options.

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