Mobility Pricing -- Final Report & Recommendations

[Traum]

Originally Posted by nsx042003

wouldn't this DBP device run into privacy law issues? the government can suddenly track where we are now? fucking insane.

congested? i don't have an issue with congestion, it's not as bad as it is if people stop fucking crashing or breaking down DURING rushhour

If you give "explicit consent" to it by "unknowningly" signing some sort of agreement / waiver, then of course there wouldn't be any issues. Google already tracks you everywhere you go if you have location services enabled. Most people couldn't care less.

[twitchyzero]

if the distance/checkpoints is app-based, sorry i can't afford a cell phone..too strapped paying for everything else

Originally Posted by Spoon

If I own a home but use mainly transit, I'd be fucking pissed if I had to pay more property tax when I don't even drive. This especially applies to seniors who are no longer suited for the road.

Would much rather see increases in gas or insurance price. Would not object to insurance based on kilometers driven either; drive more, pay more makes sense. Creating all these zones just complicates things and penalizes people who live in different districts. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if I happen to live right on the border of a tolling area. If this goes through, Vancouver businesses better be more progressive when it comes to allowing staff to work from home. Cause most of them surely can't afford to drive there anymore LOL.

this is canada

can you opt out of paying for healthcare infrastructures just because you don't use them? the interest rate for student loans when your's is all paid of? etc.

we're already paying the highest on the continent to put a car on the road...if any of the suggested metrics gets put into practice, the province will just self-implode.

[nsx042003]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

this is canada

can you opt out of paying for healthcare infrastructures just because you don't use them?

lol, funny enough, you can opt out of healthcare, just have to apply every year

[Nabatron]

Might as well buy a pedal bike to beat the system....the government will then fuck people over who ride bikes and make them get transponders or whatever to track how far the bike and charge them too

[Tone Loc]

Reading shit like this makes me glad I moved to the GTA.

1. Sell out the Lower Mainland to foreign investors and force the middle class to live farther away from their places of work.
2. Introduce taxes that punish them for not being able to afford a home closer to work.
3. Want to save money?
3a. Spend 2 hours each day sitting on a bus or train commuting.
3b. Or spend more money to drive when the reason you moved away from the city was to save money.
4. Move closer to work.
5. Go back to Step 1. Did we mention you can't afford to live closer to work?

As if it wasn't expensive enough to live in the Lower Mainland already. What a joke.

[twitchyzero]

let's pretend even if the average person is willing to use bike lanes year-round
i'm shocked how prohibitively expensive a brand name e-bike goes for...early adopters' tax I suppose

[underscore]

Originally Posted by Ch28

BRB never moving out of Vancouver or Burnaby

There's nothing quite as blatantly out of touch as assuming everyone is on the road during rush hour only because they want to be.

[Infiniti]

Originally Posted by nsx042003

lol, funny enough, you can opt out of healthcare, just have to apply every year

Why anyone would do that is beyond me? I suppose if you have the means to take care of any potential health expense out of your own pocket, then opting out might make sense, provided you are healthy and don't foresee having to use any health services.

[vantrip]

Originally Posted by yray

except we have the lowest property tax in north america?

lowest in canada for sure for an urban area

I'm guessing you never owned a property in lm before

Elizabeth Murphy: B.C. taxes need a ?second look? | Vancouver Sun

[meme405]

Originally Posted by Spoon

If I own a home but use mainly transit, I'd be fucking pissed if I had to pay more property tax when I don't even drive. This especially applies to seniors who are no longer suited for the road.

To think that just because as an individual you use transit and therfore don't benefit from the road infrastructure, is so blatantly ignorant and shortsighted.

Everything you buy/own/eat has to use that infrastructure to get into your hands.

So yeah ride the bus all you want captain planet, but don't think for a minute just because you ride the bus, you don't need all those other roads.

I really dont think our inneficiently operated government needs more taxes, they just need to consolidate all the different sources and then they would have so much fucking money instead of paying all these different departments and bean counters to figure out how to continue fucking the rest of the population.

We've gone so fucking far creating a special little tax on everything to try and make it fair, that people are paying so much in excess jsut to have someone to manage all these taxes. We need to consolidate, sure it might make it slightly unfair in certain cases, but the reality is that in the end the balance should be better for everyone's pocketbook. Except for maybe all those greasy civil servants, then they would have to just get real jobs like the rest of us.

[twitchyzero]

at least it seems like the province is very hesistant to proceed

http://www.news1130.com/2018/05/25/h...ility-pricing/

[MarkyMark]

Not surprised, being openly supportive of something years away that nobody wants probably isn't a solid strategy.

[mikemhg]

I don't understand some people in this thread blaming this idea on the NDP Government.

Were you folks not paying attention? This whole mobility tax was being proposed back when the Liberals were in power. Its the municipalities who have been pushing for a mobility tax, not the NDP.

Either way, this shit won't happen, it's political suicide. What is more striking to me though is just how out of touch our city councilmen truly are. They have sold our city to foreign investment, raping in the tax benefits, creating an affordability crisis, creating this congestion issue by approving condo tower after condo tower.

It's come to a point where I see so many condo towers going up, I can't fathom how our current road infrastructure can sustain the amount of additional vehicles. Brentwood and Metrotown areas are a perfect example.

Frankly it's unbelievable to me that this is even a concept that is even being considered.

For a city with some of the highest real estate prices in North America, I cannot understand how this city is so "cash strapped" and have to resort to putting forward such a ridiculous idea.

[Mr.HappySilp]

I mean if we actually have public transit that can get us to where we want to go in a timely matter I am ok with it. But look at how terrible our public transit is....... Unless you live near a skytrain station don't even bother using transit as your main form of public transportation.

I am thinking of moving to Coqultiam and thank god there is a skytrain now otherwise I wouldn't even consider Coq.

[meme405]

Originally Posted by mikemhg

For a city with some of the highest real estate prices in North America, I cannot understand how this city is so "cash strapped" and have to resort to putting forward such a ridiculous idea.

It's because the government is so fiscally irresponsible.

They overpay, and underprovide for literally everything they do. City workers and civil servants are vastly over paid, and over staffed, not a single one of them work an honest days work.

I'd suspect our public sector (city halls, planning, maintenance crews, etc.) could all be manned with half the staff if the people that worked in these places weren't such lazy pieces of shit. The solution to every government problem is to just hire more people, or hire an outside source to take care of the problem for them, instead of fixing the lazy ass culture they have. (and if you don't believe me, I've done work for multiple municipalities and the provincial government, as an outside contractor, for work their employees simply couldn't be bothered to do, or too lazy to do. and believe me the city people look at me like I am a god with how quickly I can get something done. And this isn't me boasting, it's to show the rest of the tax paying population how bad the people who's salary you pay through taxes are.)

fuck unions, and fuck the public sector. I'm so fed up with how much money our government spends, and how many people work for the tax payers, and how much money they spend, and yet how horribly fucked up we still are. It's an aberration.

We're like a couple steps from being as fucked as Venezuela.

EDIT: Do know that in Construction, government contracts are literally the cream of the crop. If you can get any government contract, it's a license to print money. You can dream up charges, you can dream up problems with expensive solutions, you can do whatever you want. In an industry where the norm on Profit is 10-15%, government jobs have margins of like 25-75% for companies. This extends to BChydro, translink, city work, doesn't matter.

The biggest problem is that our government rather hide problems by paying big bucks just to have them solved quickly and quietly than look at a fiscally responsible way to deal with the issue. So as soon as problem crops up, the builder quickly proposes an expensive solution where they make lots of money, and the government takes it so that voters don't hear about it.

[mikemhg]

Our Public Transit here is garbage, I'll give a little example that I found interesting from a trip last year to Portland. Yes, I know Portland and Vancouver are very different cities, but I found it interesting though, Oregon a State with no sales tax, low property taxes, can have such an excellent public transit system, and it's quite cheap, in fact free in some areas. The majority of Portland's transit buses carry new equipment, with automatic tire chains that the driver can initiate during the snow. The city equipped their buses with this technology after that major snow storm back in 2013/2014.

You ever take a look at a Translink bus? You ever notice how bald the tires are on all of them? You ever notice when Vancouver even gets a slight dusting of snow, our buses are slip and sliding down any grade of hill? How can a city like Portland with such low taxes afford to equip their buses with such tech, and a city like Vancouver with tax income up the wasoo can't even equip their buses with proper tires?

I'm always observing these types of things when I visit different cities, and I can never make sense of where tax dollars in this city even goes. Makes me truly wonder how much rampant corruption we have going on out here.

And yes, I'm sure my observation is slightly anecdotal.

Originally Posted by Mr.HappySilp

I mean if we actually have public transit that can get us to where we want to go in a timely matter I am ok with it. But look at how terrible our public transit is....... Unless you live near a skytrain station don't even bother using transit as your main form of public transportation.

I am thinking of moving to Coqultiam and thank god there is a skytrain now otherwise I wouldn't even consider Coq.