Vancouver City Council to officially kill plan for road tolls for downtown

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

Any ongoing work and investments in further studying and planning the potential for road tolls for the downtown Vancouver peninsula and Central Broadway will soon be extinguished.

In a member motion that will be deliberated on Tuesday, ABC councillors Rebecca Bligh and Mike Klassen will seek Vancouver City Council’s approval to direct City staff to put a complete halt to their transport pricing planning.

This was a key campaign promise made by the ABC Vancouver party during the civic election campaign.

The motion reads: “All work and processes specific to the planning and implementation of Transport Pricing, by and within the City of Vancouver, planned or otherwise or by any other technical definition or name, including any planning for the implementation of Transport Pricing for Downtown Vancouver and the Central Broadway Corridor as per the Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP), is suspended.”

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Additionally, the motion will direct all City staff who are currently working on transport pricing to be reassigned to work on other transportation priorities in the city.

For months leading up to the civic election, ABC Vancouver put incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart in the hot seat for his support of the “road tax,” based on his previous voting record in support of further studying transport pricing.

Stewart also dismissed transport pricing as a serious possibility, despite road tolls accounting for half of the cost of the $500 million CEAP of dozens of initiatives to reduce Vancouver’s emissions. The net revenue of road tolls — as much as $80 million annually — would also go towards covering the cost of CEAP. Furthermore, much of the City Council’s debate and discussion over approving CEAP in late 2020 related to the public controversy over the possibility of road tolls.

Some critics of ABC’s platform against road tolls even went as far as suggesting transport pricing is a “fake issue,” even though the City of Vancouver has a dedicated web page outlining how transport pricing would work and the rollout timeline by 2025 or 2026. City staff also provided City Council with an internal memo in May 2022 to specifically update their progress and timeline for planning transport pricing.

While road tolls are provincial jurisdiction, City staff previously made comments that they would examine ways to circumvent the need to receive provincial approval. When previously asked by Daily Hive Urbanized to comment on the jurisdictional issue, City staff and Stewart did not walk back on those comments.

It should be noted that City staff were responsible for first proposing the idea of road tolls in October 2020, as part of their initial CEAP package for consideration.

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

city of vancouver transport pricing website

“Transport Pricing” web page screenshot from the City of Vancouver’s website, November 2022.

city of vancouver transport pricing website 1

“Transport Pricing” web page screenshot from the City of Vancouver’s website, November 2022.

Furthermore, City staff set aside $1.5 million in the budget between 2021 and 2022 to conduct further detailed analysis and study of transport pricing, including hiring independent consultants and dedicated city planners. The May 2022 internal memo noted City staff had hired transportation planning firms Mott Macdonald and KI Squared and public relations firm Lucent Quay in September 2021 to conduct further work.

Stewart also claimed over the summer that no City staff were working on the transport pricing file. Shortly after Daily Hive Urbanized published an article in August 2022 on the road tolls controversy and highlighted at least one city planner had “Transport Pricing” in their job title, based on the municipal government’s internal directory of active employees, the title of the employee was changed to remove any reference to road tolls.

The possibility of road tolls was highly criticized by residents, businesses, and business groups in late 2020 over its likely negative impact on businesses within tolled areas, and the impact it would have on drivers who rely on their cars and cannot use alternative modes of transportation. Businesses within downtown Vancouver are already struggling from high-cost inflation, growing labour costs, soaring rents and property taxes, and added costs related to theft, vandalism, and other crime and public disorder issues. In particular, downtown Vancouver is still experiencing lower volumes of business-supporting foot traffic compared to the pre-pandemic period due to semi-remote office work.

With ABC holding a supermajority control of City Council, the motion to kill road tolls will most likely be approved.

The previous City Council also killed City staff’s other controversial proposal of implementing mandatory parking permits for all residential streets across Vancouver starting in early 2021, as another revenue opportunity to support CEAP.

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