TransLink and Gas Tax

Last week, I posted on how TransLink collects about 25% of it's property tax revenue from South of Fraser communities. A friend of mine challenged me to look at calculating the gas tax collected from South of Fraser communities. While calculating how much gas tax TransLink collects from South of Fraser residents is tricky because vehicle kilometres travelled are different for every person, I can tell you what share of passenger vehicle are registered in the South of Fraser. According to ICBC in 2010, 1,082,796 were registered in Metro Vancouver. 289,909 or 26% where registered in South of Fraser communities.

While many like to complain that transit sucks in the South of Fraser and like blaming Vancouver for stealing transit dollars, this simply isn't the case. Bus are overcrowd in Vancouver and there isn't enough bus in the South of Fraser. The real issue is that while we love complaining about crappy service, we don't like paying for improving service. Politicians know this fact, otherwise we'd have found a solution to TransLink permanent funding crisis five year ago.