Mayors of Metro Vancouver and TransLink have an opportunity to lower fares for transit riders.

According to an expert in urban studies, the money for fare reduction can come from a levy on car owners for the use of roads and bridges. 

SFU professor Anthony Perl sees this potential with the ongoing reviews on two aspects of transportation in the region: one about fares and the other on road pricing.

“We could have lower fares in the future for public transportation … paid for by revenues generated by mobility pricing on the road,” Perl told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.

TransLink is currently on the third phase of its fare review, which is focused on the introduction of distance-based fares.

On another track, TransLink and the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation have created an independent commission to look at road and bridge use charges.

The road pricing commission is expected to submit its recommendations in 2018, the same year that TransLink will decide on what kind of distance-based fares will be implemented.

“In an ideal world … we would be doing the mobility pricing first, and then adjusting the public transportation fare system pricing based on what we know we’re going to be able to collect from the mobility pricing, which will bring in much more resources than the TransLink [fare] price,” Perl said.

Perl noted that it seems like the fare and mobility pricing reviews are not being done in a coherent way.

“If we’re going to change the pricing for our public transportation system, which might be a good idea, we should do it when we change the pricing for the rest of our transportation system,” the SFU professor argued.

At present, the region does not have any form of road pricing.

The previous tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges were eliminated effective September 1, 2017 by the B.C. NDP government.

Perl had previously maintained that road pricing and distance-based fares should be approached in a cohesive manner.

“The problem is that we tend to look at these two systems separately but, of course, it’s an integrated mobility network,” Perl said in a past interview with the Straight. “And people make decisions about how to move and what to do and where to live not based on one piece of it but the whole system. So if we change one without the other, then we have the risk of unintended consequences, I think.”

In the new interview, Perl pointed out that distance-based fares “raise equity concerns, because it means that people who live farther away, often travel longer distances to try and save money on housing costs in our very expensive region, will now be penalized for traveling farther”.

“What really is the missing link in all of these, which would answer the question whether we’re winding up in the right direction or not, is how TransLink’s fare review results will relate with the mobility pricing results that are being studied by the independent commission,” Perl said.