Vancouver City Council OKs plan that includes ‘transport pricing’ implementation in Metro Core

City council approved the five-year Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) on Tuesday, November 17, which aims to reduce Vancouver’s carbon pollution by 50 percent by 2030. (File photo: @adityachinchure/Unsplash)

Vancouver City Council decided to give a thumbs up to the city staff’s plan that includes a suggestion to implement a “transport pricing” in the Metro Core.

City council approved the five-year Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) on Tuesday, November 17, which aims to reduce Vancouver’s carbon pollution by 50 percent by 2030. There are four actions considered to be a “game changer” in the plan and one of those is the transport pricing targeted to be implemented by 2025.

Once the transport pricing is in effect, it will charge drivers heading to the Metro Core, but it remains unknown how much the fee will be.

“For the City to address the largest outstanding gap in how transportation is priced, this means that a portion of vehicle trips in the Metro Core area would incur a fee to account for and improve carbon emissions, air quality, noise, safety, congestion and the use of public space,” according to the appendix A of the city staff’s report that tackles the “transport pricing work plan.”

With Tuesday’s approval of the CEAP, city staff has been directed to craft a transport pricing strategy for the Metro Core, which is defined by Burrard Street to the west, 16th Avenue to the south, Clark Drive to the east, and Burrard Inlet to the north, by 2025. They will give an update on this to city council in 2022.

Further details such as boundaries and when the transport pricing will be exactly implemented will be decided through further research and engagement with residents and businesses, as stated on the City of Vancouver’s website.

City Councillor Pete Fry also said in a tweet that “a lot of consultation” on transport pricing will happen.

To be sure there will be a lot of consultation on transport pricing. But by time we implement (2025) other N. American cities will already be there, climate will be more precarious and some of shifts DVBIA predicted around road-use/transportation will make this seem less scary

— Pete Fry (@PtFry) November 18, 2020

It was estimated in the report that the transport pricing could generate “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue per year or more and “could be the predominant source of funding for climate emergency actions, potentially used to fund other sustainable modes of transportation.”