People who complain about the "cost of driving"

[ronthecivil]

Ok, your second sentence/paragraph. So basically all you care about is your selfish self-interest. Not surprising, but ok.

I have no interest in 'winning you over'. You clearly have no interest in educating yourself with any of the evidence I've provided so it's obviously you prefer ignorance.

The whole money issue we've gone over. There's money, it's just priorities.

My self interest works out no matter what happens. I am smart that way. I actually cheer for doing the most cost effective reasonalble things, and I try to think of ways that might actually have a chance of getting vote in by the people.

I am very familiar with everything and anything you post as evidence.

Health and education are the top two priorites, are very, very expensive, and are in need of much more money if people expect them to be anywhere near the current level of service they already complain is inferior.

You could raise taxes, but consensus is too high.

You find a bunch of money for transit in that situation...........

Seriously. If you were going to give an idea that you knew you could get the mayors to put out as the vote, what would it be?

[ronthecivil]

Right, that means drivers should be paying significantly more, specifically single occupancy vehicles.

Tell that to drivers. Be sure to detail how much more the should and will be paying.

Now do that as a politician. See how many votes that gets you........

[inane]

I don't ignore the cost of doing nothing. In fact I have stated several times everything is done backwards. There should more infrastructure spending when times are slow (like now, now would be a good time to go on a building binge) and less when times are good (like our constant weird program of building everything just before a big event like Expo or the Olympics when the economy is rolling and labour and materials are at a premium).

However, given the very likely possibility of being in a net deflationary environment, any net value analysis would tell you that deferring spending is likely to result in overall savings.

The government will make a lot more money with people driving, especially with all the toll bridges going in.

And yes, no matter how much you try to deny it, money IS the only thing that matters. If you want to assign a value to something (like say your own life, a couple million at best) then that's fine, but especially when things are getting tight, if you don't have a business case, you're done.

It's impossible to take anyone seriously that doesn't understand our monitary and political situation as well.

If I was king I would tax the gas enough to connect skytrain or better service to every town centre in the region, enforce the ALR and regional growth plan with draconian zeal, and ensure there was so much well built developement in the growth areas that housing was actually affordable. But I am not the king, nor are you, so arguing what we should do in an enviroment where money and public opinion don't matter are irrelevant.

You keep jumping to these extremes, I don't know why. You're the worst kind of lazy, you know the system sucks, you freely admit it does, yet you're too lazy/selfish to do anything about it because that would be hard.

[ronthecivil]

Why should they be shared equally? They aren't used equally...

Don't worry, the big trend is for user pay. Actually, you should worry if that's the case.

[ronthecivil]

You keep jumping to these extremes, I don't know why. You're the worst kind of lazy, you know the system sucks, you freely admit it does, yet you're too lazy/selfish to do anything about it because that would be hard.

It's the political and economic system we have. Nobody is interested in revolution.

The general population is interested in their self interest, and the people that represent them know that and play to exactly that. They might not say so, but when they don't, they find themselves on their ass.

Democary is a bitch eh?

[inane]

It's the political and economic system we have. Nobody is interested in revolution.

The general population is interested in their self interest, and the people that represent them know that and play to exactly that. They might not say so, but when they don't, they find themselves on their ass.

Democary is a bitch eh?

It is in all of our self interest. You go on about no money, yet you're too lazy to support being more fiscally efficient.

[ronthecivil]

I love being fiscally efficient.

Skytrain only needs to go to Arbutus.

They should extend the Surrey skytrain to get out of the city centre. (Like say 168th).

The rest of the light rail and skytrain portions can all be Bline buses.

Make a fourth transit zone that includes Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Cloverdale, Langley, South Surrey, and White Rock and use that money to improve their bus service, in particular Bline service to skytrain lines for all of them.

Build six lanes of Putello and the North Fraser perimeter road to handle the traffic. Much more toll money per amount spent.

Make a deal with the province to get rid of the light on 91 and make a collector distributor service with HOV bypass for the south side of the Alex Fraser bridge to help mitigate the lane constriction issue on the south side. Then toll it to close the loop on the South Fraser screenline. Make one of the Bline buses one that collects up the North Delta traffic lined up for the bridge and to zip them over to 22nd street station.

With all the toll money from that the amount of additional taxation needed would be minimal.

It's a good compromise (a useful move for people operating in democracies) while fundamentally putting the majority of the effort into transit and most of the cost going to drivers.

I know you hate it and you can tell me it's backwards to build roads when you can just toll them but then you have to give people a carrot if you want them to follow.

[Denguin]

Why should they be shared equally? They aren't used equally...

I never said they should be shared equally. In fact, I think you'll find I said the opposite.

Now what I think needs to be done (dare I say it), is that we need to start variable tolling on all major routes. Of course, it's not going to be popular in the slightest sense, and I don't expect it to be. My only point with it is that it has proven to be a source of valuable funding, gives people some incentive to car-pool, and/or take transit, and would reduce volume on an already backwards road system in the lower mainland.

Now, it's a pretty "out-there" statement to make, and there would be A LOT that needs to be worked out (that I'm not going to argue about with anyone here... (i.e. pushing traffic elsewhere, how much, would lopside this argument even more, etc.), but it's something that will become the norm in the near future anyway.

Raise the fares (but riders do not get charged tolls) slightly, and use the toll money to stop raising taxes.

[ronthecivil]

^ I for a long time said we should fix all the crappy south fraser crossings (and a few north fraser connections) and toll them all. If you used a standard 3 dollar toll it would make billions in profit.

In that situation....

If people stop crossing the bridges, well, we don't make as much money, but we wouldn't need it. Either they moved to places they can walk too, started taking transit, etc. The need for more money goes away.

If it's expected numbers, sure there's a toll, but there's money for transit to provide alternatives.

If the bridges are super packed, you have money galore to start connecting skytrain all over the lower mainland.

And if that extreme situation, you start putting in time of day billing so that you can manage the traffic to flow more evenly over the bridges.

This kind of deal if it was the basis of a transit referendum might not get a yes vote, but it would have a much greater chance of success.

And secretly, it substitutes cost instead of congestion as a demand management tool (see inane, I even know the lingo).

It's a shame an insider like him never brought the idea to his bosses. It could have won the crowd.

Instead were going to see a no vote, the province collect all the toll revenue (on the bridges that will be getting upgraded anyways), and the same old same old vis a vis transit (which in Coquiltam still sucks just as bad as when I was a kid!)

[inane]

^ I for a long time said we should fix all the crappy south fraser crossings (and a few north fraser connections) and toll them all. If you used a standard 3 dollar toll it would make billions in profit.

In that situation....

If people stop crossing the bridges, well, we don't make as much money, but we wouldn't need it. Either they moved to places they can walk too, started taking transit, etc. The need for more money goes away.

If it's expected numbers, sure there's a toll, but there's money for transit to provide alternatives.

If the bridges are super packed, you have money galore to start connecting skytrain all over the lower mainland.

And if that extreme situation, you start putting in time of day billing so that you can manage the traffic to flow more evenly over the bridges.

This kind of deal if it was the basis of a transit referendum might not get a yes vote, but it would have a much greater chance of success.

And secretly, it substitutes cost instead of congestion as a demand management tool (see inane, I even know the lingo).

It's a shame an insider like him never brought the idea to his bosses. It could have won the crowd.

Instead were going to see a no vote, the province collect all the toll revenue (on the bridges that will be getting upgraded anyways), and the same old same old vis a vis transit (which in Coquiltam still sucks just as bad as when I was a kid!)

The problem with your plan you continue to ignore is

it's based on this wishful dream of a super profitable bridge, of which there is zero evidence that will happen (golden ears/port mann the obvious case study).

even if they make money, they don't start making money for 30 years.

We need $$ for transit now so 30 years from now doesn't really help and you've now had 30 more years of sprawling development because that's exactly what you get with wider highways etc so now making transit viable is that much harder.

Going back the previous discussion on subsidies, we need to acknowledge roads are massively subsidized.

http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/012813.pdf

http://usa.streetsblog.org/index.php/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-percent-of-u-s-road-spending/

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don%E2%80%99t-pay-for-themselves/

And start charging what they are actually costing us. I know at my work every single family development we build that brings in tax revenue in the form of new tax payers is a money loser when you factor in the new roads, sewer, drains, water, police, etc etc etc required to service them. We lose money. And that doesn't even factor in the environmental costs, social costs, health care costs etc.

Why do we do it?

[ronthecivil]

The problem with your plan you continue to ignore is

it's based on this wishful dream of a super profitable bridge, of which there is zero evidence that will happen (golden ears/port mann the obvious case study).

even if they make money, they don't start making money for 30 years.

We need $$ for transit now so 30 years from now doesn't really help and you've now had 30 more years of sprawling development because that's exactly what you get with wider highways etc so now making transit viable is that much harder.

Going back the previous discussion on subsidies, we need to acknowledge roads are massively subsidized.

http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/012813.pdf

http://usa.streetsblog.org/index.php/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-percent-of-u-s-road-spending/

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don%E2%80%99t-pay-for-themselves/

And start charging what they are actually costing us. I know at my work every single family development we build that brings in tax revenue in the form of new tax payers is a money loser when you factor in the new roads, sewer, drains, water, police, etc etc etc required to service them. We lose money. And that doesn't even factor in the environmental costs, social costs, health care costs etc.

Why do we do it?

Not bad.

I would suspect that once all the loop holes are closed that profits will be quite high. The costs of doing the improvements I propose to the Alex Fraser would in the the hundrds of milliions. The tolls would support projects in the billions. With low interest rates if you have a revenue source you would have the money to start funding things early and have the ability to service debts on the big ticket skytrain items.

I acknowlege that roads are massively subsidised. I stated as much earlier in the thread. But the people using them don't care. They would say that subsidy is there for the public good. That they are the drivers (no pun intended) of the economy. That in the real world you need a car to get your kids to school and yourself to work only to stop by on the way home on the way from work to get groceries. You try doing that on the bus that comes once every hour!

See how much rhetoric they have on their side? You can't defeat them. Especially when their only viable choice was to live in a money loosing outer suburb. (What's really scary is the amount of townhouse, apartements, and even towers you see in places like south surrey and white rock when there's not even a hope of having a transit line to service them!).

But you see the heart of the issue. It's about where we are putting all these people.

The feds see the writing on the wall vis a vis our aging population, so it's open up the immigration gates. Which means more and more people in the region.

People in established neighbourhoods are happy the way they are, and are quite content to leave things the way they are, aka do nothing. Which puts all the pressure on the outlying areas.

If you want to talk about the cost of doing nothing, tell me what's wrong with these pictures....

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.24461,-123.04686,3a,75y,84.17h,94.41t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfMsmqn74jBRcFMiUIet7vg!2e0

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.24461,-123.04686,3a,75y,84.17h,94.41t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfMsmqn74jBRcFMiUIet7vg!2e0

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.24461,-123.04686,3a,75y,84.17h,94.41t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfMsmqn74jBRcFMiUIet7vg!2e0

People would love to live in these places. There's just not enough places for everyone to fit. Hence the political pressure on your masters.

[inane]

I acknowlege that roads are massively subsidised. I stated as much earlier in the thread. But the people using them don't care. They would say that subsidy is there for the public good.

And I'm not suggesting we charge the full true cost, but it has to be somewhat more balanced. That's where congestion charges or road pricing comes in. It's the free market baby--you want to drive at peak times, you pay more. Just like anything else in a free market system.

[ronthecivil]

And I'm not suggesting we charge the full true cost, but it has to be somewhat more balanced. That's where congestion charges or road pricing comes in. It's the free market baby--you want to drive at peak times, you pay more. Just like anything else in a free market system.

If you had a toll line of bridges (a convient place to implement such a system) and if it was put in fully (would need to shift the line from the golden ears to the Pitt River Bridge) it would be a logical second step if congestion became problematic - so long as the money went straight to providing an alternative.

Putting any toll on any peice of existing infrastructure that is not being improved signficantly is political suicide. Might as well run for Mayor of Vancouver on a platform of putting in a downtown V2.0 centred around the Broadway skytrain with Commercial drive being the new Granville street.......

[mugpot]

I know Translink is always crying lack of money but Tolled driving is a dumb idea. You'd swear Vancouver is the size of Los Angeles with some of these ideas they come up with

[The Colt 45s]

The public does subsidize your gas, roads, crash related costs, environmental costs, productivity costs, health costs, etc... You are ignoring that.

The public does not subsidize the gasoline I use to fill my car up. Government provides infrastructure for the common good. Crash related costs are supposed to be paid for by the insurance of the offending party. Environmental costs are sensitively fictitious and just another form of taxation. Productivity increase is a net benefit because that improves the overall economy. And health costs due to transportation does not correlate in a modern transportation system highly regulated by mandate, as people are free to live and move where they want to.

[inane]

The public does not subsidize the gasoline I use to fill my car up. Government provides infrastructure for the common good. Crash related costs are supposed to be paid for by the insurance of the offending party. Environmental costs are sensitively fictitious and just another form of taxation. Productivity increase is a net benefit because that improves the overall economy. And health costs due to transportation does not correlate in a modern transportation system highly regulated by mandate, as people are free to live and move where they want to.

Lol a lot of wishful thinking there.