Metro Vancouver mayors will meet later this month to talk about raising gas and property taxes to pay for transit expansion in the Lower Mainland. Earlier this summer, the mayors gave their provisional approval to the plan, but the official vote will come this fall.

Naturally, the transit special interest groups are out banging the drum for more taxes.

They say another two cents per litre of gas tax and another spike in property tax are needed to fund the Evergreen SkyTrain line in Port Moody and Coquitlam. They claim the regional economy will be hobbled or damaged without that line.

Stop the bus—I wanna get off!

How could an economy be hobbled by losing something that doesn’t exist?

TransLink and this group want to add 2 cents a litre of gas tax when we already pay the highest gas taxes in the country. If TransLink can’t get by with 15 cents a litre, why would anyone think they could work with 17 cents? They already jack up property taxes by 3% a year—why would more work? And what about the tolls on the Golden Ears Bridge? People can’t afford these transit taxes.

The core issue here is that many citizens are uncomfortable and distrustful of what TransLink is doing with our tax dollars. They seem to be adding debt at an unprecedented rate. They favour certain areas of the region over others. They continue with a piece meal approach to transportation, lacking any coherent plan or strategy.

And they cling to the pipe dream of things like the carbon tax riding to the rescue—which is highly unlikely to happen. When the current carbon tax legislation expires in 2012, that tax should be retired—not collected and turned over to TransLink.

In the crusade to create a “sustainable” region, let’s not raise taxes to unsustainable levels.