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Originally Posted by squiggs96
It sounds like Horgan will announce the elimination of toll bridges today at 10:00 am PDT. It will save daily commuters, the people who actually use the bridges, about $1,500 per year. It eliminates about $200M in revenue between the Golden Ears and Port Mann bridges. It also likely eliminates the jobs for those that work at Treo.
The Golden Ears debt must be repaid by 2041 and the Port Mann is scheduled to be repaid by 2050. Horgan has not announced how he plans to pay back the debt, or make up the lost revenue. Speculation is he'll use the Prosperity Fund that was created by the Liberals.
The NDP campaigned on this, so it's not shocking they are taking steps to eliminate the tolls. What is shocking to me is that Weaver is on board. By eliminating the tolls, more people will drive. This will cause more pollution. The NDP said they want quicker traffic to downtown. By putting more cars on the road, it will have the opposite effect they want.
There's still no word on when the NDP will ban corporate donations to political parties. They said they'd do it as soon as they got into power. Instead, they have held fund raising golf parties.
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With Petronas pulling out of coastal LNG the prosperity fund basically doesn't exist. I believe it is less than 500 million at this point.
If you cancelled site-c, you could eliminate the bridge tolls and still come out ahead.
Not surprising to me the Greens are on board with this. I don't think it will add to cars on the road, it just means less traffic diverting through New West. There still isn't what I would call 'frequent' and 'reliable' public transport for these commuters so I don't really see how it adds more cars to the road. There isn't really an alternative now, the same people will drive, they just won't take a more circuitous route through New West to do so.This may actually reduce the number of KMs driven by the same commuters.