Green Shift To _____ ?
As I was riding home from the bike shop this afternoon where I had picked up a $2.19 plastic push pin, I found myself sitting in traffic lined up as far as the eye could see and thinking “if only it didn’t take 3 buses and 60 minutes each way I would have gladly paid the ($4 return) transit fare for my $2.19 plastic push pin and taken the bus“… alas, it does take 2 hours and 6 buses to replace that 40 minute (return) drive – and that thought resulted in the further thought of, what would happen if all of a sudden a majority of the city decided to take the bus?
The answer is, of course, that if there was a significant general increase in ridership OC Transpo would be over whelmed .
Last year when I hopped on the bus I was guaranteed a seat to myself for most of the ride into the downtown core, and rare was the day that people stood in the isles – that’s not the case any more, this summer the bus is always full to the brim and that’s either because (a) a whole lot of people in this area got jobs downtown, or (b) they’re not driving downtown anymore because the price of gas is too high for them….. and I’m gonna guess it’s (b).
So if there is a significant overall increase in ridership because gas prices take a carbon tax spike how will municipalities across Canada handle it? To answer that question I turned to The Green Shift document for an answer (because surely the Liberals have thought of this and wouldn’t float a plan that didn’t take it into consideration) and discovered that
This Green Shift is at the heart of the Liberal plan to fight climate change and improve Canada’s environment and economy. It complements other Liberal commitments to green our economy, such as the Renewable Power Production Incentive that will more than double the non-emitting energy sources available to Canadians, the $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing and Prosperity (AMP) Fund that will stimulate green manufacturing, and the major Infrastructure Surplus commitment to upgrade our sustainable infrastructure such as public transit through unanticipated government surpluses.
I am hoping that some Liberal type will read this and explain to me in really simple sentences what that means, because from here it looks like if there is a ridership spike because of the carbon tax driving gas prices further up the municipalities are on their own unless there there is a bunch of unanticipated government money sitting in the coffers all ready to go.
Therefor the question to Dion (and his supporters in this): “If the carbon tax was instituted tomorrow and was successful in getting people out of their cars how will the federal government immediately assist municipalities in dealing with the major infrastructure requirements necessary to move a (potentially) significant increase in public transit ridership?”
A further question: “If the carbon tax was instituted tomorrow and was successful in getting people out of their cars what is the plan for those who currently do not have a public transit alternative?”
There better be a concrete plan in place that can be mobilized immediately, otherwise this looks a lot like a simple tax grab over the 10, 15, or 20, year period it could well take municipalities with public transit to put the increased infrastructure in place – and a blatant tax grab for those places where there simply is no alternative, or the municipality cannot afford to increase infrastructure.
Well, I don’t think that it would get many people out of their cars as the carbon tax does not further tax gasoline. Diesel is, due to it’s high use in the trucking industry, which has been a source of rising GHG emissions (up 20% 2003-2006), but even that will amount to something like $0.07 /litre — not car-stopping stuff, but corporations will see that add up in a truck fleet and will seek ways to reduce emissions in order to reduce costs.
The Green Shift involves setting what is really a wholesale tax, which tends to keep taxation upstream; that is, being paid by a smaller number of large emitters.
I’m sure that the usual back-and-forth among the three levels of government would occur over who funds what and for how much.
I don’t think that the carbon tax has to be the place where funding is to come from.
I also am not a fan of the Feds picking and choosing which local transit projects are to get bucks. I prefer those to be local decisions, which usually means they end up being locally funded (read: provincial).
I was under the impression that the existing transit funding (one percentage point of the GST? I forget and am too lazy to google it) is distributed via the feds per capita for transit/infrastructure. Is there a requirement that projects be pre-approved before the $ are delivered?
Anyway, to SL’s original point about an uptick in transit usage. Edmonton has a ‘master’ LRT expansion plan currently winding it’s way through the bureacracy. While it would expand the LRT significantly in all directions (so more like the GO system in Toronto than the single line it now is), but even if funding were in place right now (probably in the 7 billion range at today’s $), it won’t be complete for 7-10 years. These things take time – to design, to build, etc. In the interim, the City will have to increase the numbers of busses and routes to meet the demand, which will also cost more $. If the federal funding is earmarked for LRT (for example), the City will still have to fund the additional busses, staff, etc. which is probably not an insignificant amount.
Crappy transit will likely be one of those “unintended consequences” should the Green Shift (non-TM’d) be put into play.
It’s all well and good to say that there will not be an additional direct tax added to gasoline Mark, but the cost of selling that product is going to go up.
The cost of getting the fuel to the pump is going to increase, we can expect (depending on what the energy source is) additional heating and lighting costs… if we only take the diesel component of getting gasoline from the refinery to the pump how much are we talking?
– and those are costs that will be passed on to the consumer and will add to the current cost of gasoline.
Call it my cynicism over political promises but IMO those who make them rarely tell the whole story, and I’ve seen nothing to make me believe that that’s the case here.
If there is any cost increase to gasoline as a result of the carbon tax (and I think I’m not being unreasonable in predicting that there will be) that spikes public transit ridership beyond current capacity how does Dion deal with it?
… and, once again, what happens to those who have no alternative?
That’s both the beauty, and the scary part about a carbon tax shift. It will trigger more shifts than just paying more for energy, it will change how society thinks about travel and public transit.
GM ought to focus on building more buses instead of SUVs and trucks, and maybe they’ll still have a reason to have plants open.
SL – I have more than a little sympathy for your point here and in the post regarding the Northern Premiers, but the simple fact of the matter is that these changes are coming regardless of Dion’s tax plan. Given the spiraling cost of oil, this tax will be little better than a drop in the bucket. Truthfully, this would have been a great idea 20 years ago when $0.10 a litre would have been more noticeable.
Gas and fuel, and as a result everything that gets transported, are just going to keep rising and people are going to have to adjust somehow. Encouraging a shift to cleaner and less fossil fuel dependent energy sources is a good idea, because it won’t be much longer before such options will be the cheaper ones, and encouraging the shift now with a tax incentive plan will save us greater pain later.
Still, it takes 15-20 years to turn-over the automobile fleet, and closer to 50 to reconstruct infrastructure in such a way that public transit becomes a more realistic option. Most of our cities have sprawled out into suburbs and exurbs with too low of population densities to make public transit an economical option. And yes, rural folks and those of us living in the territories have even fewer options. Do you know anyone who has a plan to deal with that?
Now, Dion is selling this plan as revenue-neutral, saying that whatever money is raised by the carbon tax is returned to Canadians via tax breaks, lower income tax rates, higher benefits, and so forth. If we really wanted to do as you suggest and come up with a plan to upgrade infrastructure, then the only way to do it would be to keep all the money the carbon tax raised and reinvest it in infrastructure.
Now, that actually isn’t too bad an idea, but you can bet every dollar you have that everyone would be calling it a “tax grab” if that were the case. So it is either do it his way, which will be a hard enough sell as it is, or carry on with the status quo and dig an even deeper hole.
The plan is by no means perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. If we’re lucky. Dion can cut the subsidies we Canadians keep paying to the oil companies and reinvest that into alternative energy and infrastructure.
Well, we do have to change. I imagine the plan goes like this: GAS TAX (cross fingers and wait for the public to scream or the corporate world invents a solution).
In Vancouver, if we could just get 4 people in a single car with basic carpooling, or more people on motorcycles, we’d be a hell of a jump forward – our commuter routes are stuffed with single occupant vehicles.
>what would happen if all of a sudden a majority of the city decided to take the bus?
They’d be SOL, particularly in jurisdictions which are in love with rail. But people who don’t have an alternative won’t use it; they’ll stay in cars.
We once thought fuel taxes could be applied to change behaviour, but now we know differently. Recent years’ market price increases are much greater than anything a politician might have risked, and the adjustments made by people have not been staggering. There is still a lot that can be done with flex time and telecommuting. Many HOV lanes, except for a couple of hours twice a day, are effectively underutilized road surface – we paid for it, but we don’t use it to optimum capacity by restricting HOV hours appropriately. Fuel tax increases at this point are an opportunistic tax grab, because it’s a revenue increase that is barely noticed by the taxpayer.
Rail is an inefficient diversion. When you add up capital costs and operating subsidies, it would be cheaper – literally – to buy each member of the ridership an inexpensive car with the capital budget and use the operating subsidy to buy each person gas. All that for something that runs on a fixed route and can be completely deadlined by an obstruction. It is vastly preferable to buy buses, which have route flexibility.
I’ll leave it up to SL to explain how much congestion a motorcycle removes, since I’m sure he has an appreciation of how much less road space he likes to have given to him by other motorists. I understand there’s a reduction in fuel use, but the major effect of congestion is to massively increase overall fuel use due to unproductive engine activity. Plus, given the shorter operating life of most motorcycles relative to cars, I’d be interested to see a measure of the relative carbon inputs to keep one person on a motorcycle versus a car for 40 working years.
Although many may find it odd to see me agreeing with you lrC, generally you are not far off the mark. My stance on this one has had the Liberals calling me a Harperite, or a closet Conservative, and, when those well thought out and logical enticements fail to change my position, they fall back to the tried and true “it’s better than nothing“.
The more I look at this the more I see it as a simple new tax levied under the guise of being environmentally friendly as opposed to behaviour shaping – because until there are reasonable, real, and viable alternatives, for people to shift to, little, other than new tax revenue generation will be accomplished.
Increased costs of doing business will be passed on to consumers who, for the most part will (as is usually the case) be forced to suck it up…. energy costs will increase and consumers, for the most part, will be forced to suck it up, because there currently are not a lot of (if any depending on where you live and work) reasonable, real, and viable alternatives.
One might argue that these alternatives do not yet exist because there has been, until this point, no real impetus to create them, and that now they will appear, and that may well be the case; but you can bet your arse that the increased cost of living will show up a very long time before something appears that my friends who live in rural Ontario can call an alternative.
Congestion is not the major factor lrC (although it is one that people like to bring up to muddy the water instead of talking about the entire carbon foot print), fuel consumption, O&M, road damage, and emissions, are far larger factors. I get 53.55 mpg (US) on my sport bike, cause far less wear and tear to the roads I use than a car would, even idling in traffic I emit less pollution than all but the smallest of the new environmentally friendly cars, I need way less space to park, and O&M (oil, lube, tires, etc…) requirements are far lower and therefor more environmentally friendly.
I’m not sure where you’re going with the “shorter operating life relative to cars” — my 25 year old cruiser runs like a charm, and shows absolutely no sign of giving up the ghost anytime soon, heck, with almost 110,000km on the meter the engine is just barely broken in
Some of the more progressive cities are starting to clue in on these things and trying to encourage them – Toronto, with its’ free motorcycle/scooter parking, designated motorcycle/scooter parking zones, and access to the HoV lanes, is one of them.
>25 year old cruiser runs like a charm, and shows absolutely no sign of giving up the ghost anytime soon, heck, with almost 110,000km
25 years to get to 110,000 km says it all. Auto warranties are expressed in years/increments of 20,000 km for a reason. Still, you’ve owned your bike much longer than any acquaintance of mine who has one. The point is that every new machine – of any kind – has a massive carbon footprint just to get to the dealer’s lot. The environmentally friendly folks are the ones who roll the odometer a few times on one car.