New Port Mann Bridge toll for cars is $1.50 – A Pre-election Goody?
In a deliberate attempt to pander for votes in next spring’s election the BC Liberal government has offered a ‘pre full toll special’ for a few months and if you register for a decal, you get a full year at the discounted price – yippee!
Zwei is not against tolling, but the new Port Mann Bridge is all about politics; a new bridge replacing a recently refurbished Port Mann Bridge (why not build a smaller and cheaper bridge, use bothAi??and charge less toll?), which will be torn down. This smells like a political deal to force drivers to pay tolls for forty years to a company that is in bed with the BC Liberals andAi??smacks of crass cronyism and politcal pandering, but then that is the hallmark of the BC Liberal Party.
I also laugh at the proposed express bus service from Langley to the closest SkyTrain station, is being called ‘Rapid Bus’ as transit customers will find the service not so rapid as they first thought, when one considers a forced transfer to SkyTrain and many more transfers later to complete ones journey. The proposed express bus service is definitely not rapid bus or BRT, but that doesn’t stop Langley mayor Fassbender to embarrass himself by talking of ‘transit things’ that he knows little about and one wonders if he is not taking his cue from Victoria?
And finally, former Vancouver NPA councillor Gordon Price, local “legend in his mind“, who has found a comfortable sinecure at SFU, who constantly cheers any new tax on car drivers, yet offers very little else as an alternative, except for walking and cycling. Hey “Trains are toys for boys” Price, how about supportingAi??the affordable and shovel ready RftV/Leewood Vancouver to Chilliwack TramTrain?
No, I thought not, there is not much political or academic mileage to be made on simple and effective transit solutions.
As I have said before, the Port Mann Bridge is BC blacktop politics at its best.
New Port Mann Bridge toll for cars is $1.50
If you register for decal before March, you’ll get a full year discount
Dan BurrittSep 12, 2012
SURREY (NEWS1130) – If you plan to drive a car over the new Port Mann Bridge when eight lanes open in December, you will pay $1.50 per crossing, down from $3.00.
And drivers who register for a free online tolling account and decal by February 28th, 2013 will receive the discounted toll for a full year.
Transportation Minister Mary Polak says drivers won’t see the full benefit from the new span until other work on Highway 1 and the South Fraser Perimeter Road is finished.
“Drivers shouldn’t have to pay the full toll until we provide the full-time savings,” Polak says.
“When this project is complete, drivers will see their commute times reduced by up to 50 percent,” she notes, adding it took her nearly two hours to drive from her home in Langley over the existing Port Mann bridge to Downtown Vancouver today.
Light trucks and cars pulling trailers will be charged $4.50 to cross the new span, $1.00 for motorcycles and $9.00 for semi trailers and large trucks, although that fee is cut in half if truckers cross between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.
“Currently, the time [semi truck drivers] spend in traffic is time that costs them money, so this already is a significant advantage for them and the opportunity to travel at night and have a 50 percent discount is certainly significant,” Polak contends. “We anticipate and, in fact, have heard support from the trucking industry for the framework that we’ve put in place.”
Polak and Transportation Investment Corporation (TI Corp) — the Crown agency overseeing the new Port Mann project — is encouraging as many drivers as possible to sign up for the free online tolling account and decal.
Drivers who get the new decal can use it across the tolled Golden Ears Bridge as well. Drivers with the Golden Ears Quickpass transponder can use the new Port Mann but won’t receive a discount, so the website suggests you return the transponder after December 1st and sign up for the Treo decal.
Polak says their plan to pay off the bridge is still on track despite the discount. “Tolls will still come off the bridge at 2050 and it will still be paid off then.”
She also expects rapid bus service to travel over the new bridge come December, despite TransLink’s funding challenges.
Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender is also confident the rapid buses will run and plans to be on board the first coach to cross the bridge
“It may mean reallocating of some resources,” he says. “I don’t have the answers until TransLink brings it forward but I have the commitment from the minister and the government.”
NDP Transportation Critic Harry Bains calls the bridge tolls punishing, but wouldn’t say specifically if his party would raise them if they won power. “Chances are [the] tolls could go up if they are not on target as far bringing in sufficient revenue on tollings,” Bains says.
Short term gain for long term pain?
There are suggestions that the immediate discount on the bridge could mean short term gain for long term pain.
It will take decades to pay this off regardless, but North Vancouver District Mayor Richard Walton say shortening the cost to you on the front end will just extend it further on the back.
“The question is where are those funds going to come from?” he asks. “They have to come from users at some point. Market-force is at play when you are pricing public transportation as well. So you have to take a look at trying to get the optimum amount of revenue and making sure traffic keeps flowing over the bridge.”
Meanwhile, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts figures people will be pleased to get to test out the bridge for less than they had expected.
Truckers won’t see reduced rates
There’s no toll discount for truckers who want to use the new Port Mann bridge in the day. This has the BC Trucking Association encouraging semi drivers to pass the $9.00 toll onto customers.
President Louise Yako doesn’t want that burden on her members.
“If you look at a $9.00 toll, it doesn’t seem to be very much, but if you add on a series of incremental costs then obviously, it will affect the total cost of transportation,” notes Yako.
The half price overnight rate remains in place, but she doubts a lot of truckers will take advantage of it.
Drivers will keep using the Port Mann Bridge
The head of the City Program at SFU expects drivers will keep using the Port Mann and Highway 1.
“Well, I’m signing up. I’m going to take the deal, it’s actually pretty good,” says Gordon Price. “I think they’ve done a good job with what you call a loss-leader. Get us all signed up, registered, and then we are on our way to not just bridge tolling.”
“I think you’re going to be seeing this rolling out so that all kinds of roads, bridges, gosh-you-name-it, are going to be part of a comprehensive road-pricing system in the future,” he adds.
The City Program studies issues like urban planning, transportation, and development. Price expects the reduced toll for crossing the bridge should be enough of an incentive that drivers will “try it out.”
“[Drivers] will make their trade-offs, I think some will,” he says. “But basically the appeal of Highway 1 and the bridge, I have to say it’s a pretty attractive option.”
Price says his biggest criticism of the Port Mann project is that new transit options for communities south of the Fraser River are not in place for the opening of the new lanes on the bridge.
http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/400840–new-port-mann-bridge-toll-for-cars-is-1-50
I won’t be a part of this sham. The government started off on their well thought out plan by deceiving the people into thinking that they were going to “twin” the Port Mann. Then when the people took the bait, they switched to a different plan. Who ever thought that ripping down a perfectly good bridge, that was paid for already and putting up a toll bridge that throttles the public’s right to drive on a national highway was a good idea? That doesn’t make sense and whatever you believe about the intelligence of a politician, I contend there must be another reason. My calculation is that best case scenario, the bridge will generate 65.7M$ per year and take over 50 years to pay for if only 300,000 people use it every day for 50 years. That’s a pretty slimy business case and sets a poor example to the people of BC. That is when it comes to infrastructure that we can’t afford as a province, somehow holding specific repeat users of that infrastructure up to ransom, because their livelihoods depend on it, is fair game. But I believe in this instance it goes deeper than that. In order to say that people will save time by using this bridge can only come about by creating a segment of the population who disagree with tolls and accordingly will seek alternate routes, but more importantly, the traffic must be unimpeded by toll booths. Hence the scanning system and registration of vehicles. It is this technology of attaching a sticker to your windshield that is the real prize for the government. They could easily have gone into hock for the $3.5Billion and raised our taxes so everybody could use the bridge without all this fuss. But no, sliding this scanning technology in under the radar in my mind was the real coup. These so called stickers are RFID identifiers. That is, inside the sticker is an electronic device that holds identifiable information about you that links to a database about your vehicle and your financial data used to pay the tolls. When you pass under the scanner as you happily proceed to work each day, the sticker circuitry is “excited” by the scanner output waves, thereby releasing your information to the TREO corporation so they can bill you. While that sounds pretty cool to the trusting trendy types who don’t think this is a threat, the fact is that as a method to charge tolls, it is also a method to track you. Because if the government can track your vehicle for the purposes of sending you a Port Mann toll bill, they can also track you where ever you are in the province just by installing scanners where ever they want. Think what this means. Tolling already paid for existing roadways and bridges is going on all over the world now. Not just new roads and bridges. There is already talk about taxing you for every kilometre you drive as a new source of carbon tax revenue. Further consider the outcry when people first learned about the Port Mann tolls and the adjoining cities and municipalities with already heavily used bridges started crying that their bridges should be tolled as though this sharing of pain would justify tolling of the Port Mann at all. So that is the next incremental step now that the technology and administrative support structure has gained a foothold. This new way to track you wherever you drive can very easily explode into a monstrous tax grab with tentacles that will invade your privacy, rack up your credit card and for those who see this evil for what it is, it will effectively box them into a a corner as a disincentive to free unfettered movement within a free country. It would seem the control freaks who run this country want just precisely that.