Port Mann and Golden Ears Bridge Tolls To End September 1st
 

Effective September 1st, 2017, the Port Mann and Golden Ears Bridges will no longer be tolled.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...n-bc-1.4261972

live announcement video link here:

Premier John Horgan transportation announcement LIVE - CBC Player

Tolls will still be charged until midnight August 31st. Those who are behind in their payments will still have to pay up when you go to renew your DL.

the Provincial Gov't will be absorbing the debt as part of infrastructure costs. For this year alone the estimated loss in toll collection is about $132M.

No mention at the moment of how much it will cost to cancel the contract with TI Corp/TREO, other than the building their offices are in belongs to the Transport Ministry.

Not much said on how the new Pattullo Bridge and replacement of the George Massey Tunnel will be financed.

Is mobility pricing coming...?

Thank fuck this is going away. This will ease the Patullo bridge traffic with people dodging the toll.

Just heard this on News 11:30. Golden Ears will be busy. Good for Maple Ridge, I imagine.

I dunno, I'm skeptical. It's like as a child when you did some thing really bad but then your mom wasn't mad at you. All you could think was "oh Jesus what is going to happen, I'm gonna get the belt"

I am also skeptical about this announcement.

The NDP is gonna nickel and dime us another way through increase in gas tax or use another revenue stream in order to make up for the money lost from eliminating the bridge tolls.

So now people who don't even use those bridge will foot the bill too? Maybe there will be a new tax "WFT tax"

Mobility pricing is the future. Arguably, it's fairer as you should be charged for how much you drive regardless of where you live.

I'll probably venture into Surrey more though in the short term until they come up with a plan for mobility pricing.

Mobility pricing. It's coming I just know it...

Yeah but if you're forced to live in the burbs and have to commute because you can't afford to live in the city proper, then this is kind of a tax on the poor. So really it's the same shit or worse.

https://media.giphy.com/media/TaFTuXWTJf2iA/giphy.gif

Why so soon? It seems they are still sorting out the details of how to pay, to cover revenue shortfalls for Translink, etc.

In related news, the TReO building is to be converted into "affordable" housing.

Great news but the math doesn't add up. If you reduced the toll by say 50%, that would make a lot of people happy and increase the usage. But to totally remove it, the revenue has to come from somewhere.

So stupid, Imo they should have just tolled every single bridge/tunnel and had it at a lower rate. All people see from this is that they don't have to pay the small fee to cross, but forget that money has to come from somewhere

Arguably, it should be the poor who live closest to the city centre. Unfortunately, rich millennials have distorted historical ideas around urban planning.

I don't have an opinion on mobility pricing, but the tea leaves say that it's coming.

in reality its good and bad....but in the end its pretty much the same since they will tax you on something else or make up some other tax BS. From a distance it looks good but when you really dig deap government will always be out there to fuck the people over lol

And bad for Langley as the uneducated Maple Ridge trash crosses the bridge for big box store shopping.

fuck maple ridge.....

Gee, are they trying to buy votes for the next election already! So suspetise... :suspicious:

I think tolling period is stupid. People seem to forget that we pay taxes already specifically for things like roads and infrastructure.

what would be best is if they managed their resources better, and use some of that 10bil or whatever earmarked for infrastructure to do whats needed.

Too good to be true...They will likely create some form of tax to ding everyone later on.

Lol like Langley is any better than Maple Ridge. One and the same in my eyes.

Not a fan of getting rid of the tolls so abruptly. The NDP should have waited until they had a plan in place to either toll all the bridges at a smaller fee (say $1 a crossing), or some form of mobility pricing. Seems this was a knee jerk reaction. They did have it as a promise in their campaign, so can't fault them on that.

Doesn't that sort of already come from the fuel taxes? Charging tax on the fuel and then another tax to use the fuel on the road would kinda be b/s.

700 million in remaining debt will be the NDP's legacy of this decision.

Weaver also saying this was a huge mistake, the greens support for the NDP may be slipping

Even though tolls on these bridges don't affect me directly in the sense that I live and work in Van this is a dumb ass idea. I've always been in favor with tolls but I have no idea why they set the price so high from the get go and why they didn't have different pricing models i.e. get discount for monthly passes vs occasional use etc

Shit needs to be paid for somehow of course we'll just get nickle and dimed somewhere else.

Perfect, now the houses on the far sides of the bridges just went up in value while the premium for the ones on the close side went down. Glad I didn't just buy a house in New West or Pitt Meadows.

Those of us who earn a decent living were already subsidizing the bridges and the needs of the people who live in cheaper real estate on the far side - but at least the tolls meant those people were directly shouldering some of the burden. Now I just get to pay an even larger percentage of it since all of the funding has to come from taxation rather than pay per use.

Just awesome.

-Mark

The gas tax is becoming less effective as a revenue source because cars are becoming more fuel efficient each year.

Mobility pricing is supposed to encourage people to drive less, or take their personal car (electric, hybrid, etc) when there's less traffic.

Is that road pricing going to be BC wide? Or just GVRD like aircare was etc