Several mayors recently gathered at the Legislature to protest their obligation to pay their share of operating the 911 and police emergency dispatch centre. They conveniently forget that taxpayers of Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, Oak Bay and Central Saanich have been paying their fair share.
The March 19 article '$20M transportation plan would bypass voters on route to Greater Victoria' reports that many of those same municipal officials also do not support the CRD initiatives to take leadership for policy and planning for a regional transportation system. The CRD approved a Regional Transportation Plan in 2014, but for over a decade, internal dissent and opposition by several municipalities curtailed any efforts to agree on an approach to implement that plan. So, it has been a free-for-all as each of the 13 municipalities spends the gas tax funding on their own local projects while the regional mobility needs of over a projected 460,000 residents are ignored.
About two years ago, the CRD board agreed it was time to take leadership and had staff propose options and opportunities for a multi-year plan to improve regional transportation. Staff consulted to seek a consensus agreement with each municipal council. On July 10, 2024, the CRD board unanimously directed CRD staff to prepare a draft establishment bylaw and will likely seek taxpayer approval using an alternative approval process (AAP) to take preparatory steps to establish a regional transportation service.
The opposition by the mayors listed in the article ignores a fundamental flaw in their reasoning: a failure to admit that it is their residents who are partially responsible for the daily traffic congestion that grows worse every month as we approach the projected population of 460,000. Traffic studies reveal that no matter where we sleep and pay taxes, the majority leave home and cross invisible municipal boundaries to where they work, shop, play or learn. Every morning, over 50,000 students travel to non-neighbourhood schools.
Geography dictates that the journey to your destination requires a majority of traffic to enter and use the municipal roads provided by Victoria and/or Saanich. There are few alternative routes. Most residents cannot directly access the airport, BC Ferries, major institutions and most industrial parks. All this traffic requires taxpayers of Saanich or Victoria to fund the bridges you cross and the network of roads (except for Highways 1 and 17). They also fund the parks and recreation facilities that you use, and parades and festivals you attend. These two examples confirm that the Capital Region is a poster boy for elected officials to cry wolf and beg for somebody else to pay their bills for the services their own residents enjoy.
Tragically it appears that several mayors no longer support a previously approved initiative by the CRD board to create a regional transportation service. The draft bylaw identifies purposes: to identify traffic priorities and policies for public transport, funding options for capital projects, active transportation, mobility hubs etc., to acquire land needed for transportation services including trails, advocacy to obtain funding from senior governments to fund projects and partnership agreements.
What is mystifying is that mayors opposing the CRD initiative represent communities whose residents live the farthest away from the urban centre and their trips are major contributors to the daily congestion and cry the loudest for improved traffic flows. They seek to perpetuate the free ride and expect the rest of us to pay for it. Get in line and wait for another decade.
James Anderson and Doug Pascoe
Saanich
