Editor, The News:
TransLink is proposing a vehicle licence levy to help fund its out-of-control spending habits and the regional council of mayors seems eager to endorse the madness.
We own two vehicles: one a medium-sized sedan which is used for most of our transportation needs in and around Maple Ridge, one of the communities very much under-serviced by transit; the other vehicle is a pickup truck and camper which is much less utilized in Maple Ridge and is more frequently used for recreational purposes outside the Lower Mainland and Translink’s greedy reach.
The council of mayors, led by Langley’s Peter Fassbender, seems unwilling to offer any real resistance to Translink’s ever growing fiscal rape of Lower Mainland taxpayers.
Much of the transit problem in the Greater Vancouver Region stems from the failure of local municipalities to halt the growth of single-family residential sprawl and the inability of such development to provide affordable and logical support for transit services.
Maple Ridge is a prime example of allowing single-family sprawl to create huge demands for more and better roads and improved transit services without sufficient thought given to how that might be achieved without imposing unfair and unaffordable taxes and levies on the rest of us.
As long as people can sell overpriced homes in Vancouver and come to Maple Ridge, where they can buy better homes for much less money, then demand the same level of transit services they left behind, the problem will only worsen.
It is time for our municipality and Mayor Ernie Daykin to step up to the plate and just say no to TransLink.
Sandy Macdougall
Maple Ridge