Meeting to keep the Evergreen Line on track
Posted Jun 28, 2011 12:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS1130) – With the Evergreen Line once again on life support, local mayors and the transportation minister are putting their heads together to come up with a solution.
Transportation minister Blair Lekstrom says he would like to have shovels in the ground for the transit line by the end of this year. But Metro Vancouver mayors still need to work out how they will pay for their $400 million share. He wouldn’t say what options the mayors have but he’s confident they’ll find a way.
Former TransLink board member and current SFU professor Gordon Price says a new spirit of co-operation will be needed. And he has no doubt a transit line between Coquitlam and Burnaby will get built.
“Oh, yeah. But the mayors, I think, are more concerned about the long-term funding commitments that will allow it to be operated, built and operated, and how their share of it will be financed without having to tap property tax.”
Any taxes are the issue, especially with an election year for the mayors who also use that tax for things like sewers and other civic maintenance.
“If you take away all of our taxing room on just one form of tax that we’re politically responsible for, those are unfair trade-offs that we have to make.”
Price doesn’t expect a solution until all the elections have wrapped up.
To date, both the provincial and federal governments have pitched in $400 million each towards the Evergreen Line.
