Motor Mouth: Why Vancouver's proposed gas tax is a bad idea

Article content

One of the best things about working at Driving.ca is the great people I get to work with. Smart, intelligent, and driven — in the purest, non-automotive sense of the word — working with writers that you respect, if nothing else, makes for more convivial office parties. I started all this Driving nonsense some 25 years ago and, having watched it mature into the thoughtful, purposeful forum it is today, it has been become one of the greatest achievements of my life — again, all because of the wordsmiths you read every day.

Article content

All that said, I think Lorraine Sommerfeld is full of shit.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Motor Mouth: Why Vancouver's proposed gas tax is a bad idea Back to video

Actually, I don’t think Lorraine’s writings are even remotely stool-like. Indeed, she’s the Driving writer whose tomes I’m most likely to tweet out as must-reads for the informed motorist. Driving has made tons of hires over the last quarter-century; Lorraine was amongst the best of ’em.

However, I do take issue with her latest plaint about the institution of congestion tolls in Vancouver . Basically, she thinks such a tax — because that’s what it is — on driving in downtown Vancouver would reduce both congestion and tailpipe emissions. That’s possibly true, actually probably true, there being plenty of precedent for the contention that when you tax something — in this case, access to downtown cores in your automobile — you will discourage its practice. At the very least, I suspect, such an imposition would mitigate future increases in CO ₂ emissions. So, all good news, then?

Article content

Rather, the issue I have with Lorraine’s assertion is not that it won’t work, but that, like so many solutions targeting one specific problem with laser-like focus, the cure may turn out to be worse than the disease. Environmentalists have some history of the unintended consequence in their quest for reduced greenhouse gases — Volkswagen’s blessing the world with noxious nitrogen oxides, for instance, was a direct result of the European Union’s promotion of diesel engines as the solution to the CO ₂ emission issues of the ’70s and ’80s. All too often, the first casualty of calling anything a “catastrophe” — climate change being just the latest issue being labeled existential — is circumspection and, despite all the contrary comments I’m sure to get, I’d posit that there is one issue even more ruinous to mankind’s immediate future than climate change…

Article content

The polemics of our political discourse.

Now, the truly small-minded would like to blame the sad state of current politics on specific politicians — Joe Biden or Donald Trump, if you’re American; Justin Trudeau or Erin O’Toole here in Canada. Those with a little more insight point to the Internet as the source of the echo chambers that are causing the continuous reflection of tightly held beliefs, rather than exposure to new ones.

But even that really fails to capture that which divides us. The fact is, as so many pundits are now raising the alarm, the real divide seems to be urban versus rural populations. One side of this equation thinks of the other as smug, self-righteous liberal twats. The other labels their counterparts as nothing short of unthinking Neanderthal fascists. And I don’t think I really need to specify who’s who in this argument, do I? Indeed, The Economist recently noted the second-most significant predictor of support or rejection of mask mandates in the U.S. was whether you lived in a city or the country, trailing only whether one voted for The Donald or Joe Biden.

Article content

I don’t know Vancouver well enough to point to specific points of political differences, but I do know that its downtown elite and the good folks of Surrey are not exactly on speaking terms these days. Here in the GTA, the schism between the 416 area code and 905ers is, if not as vitriolic as the divisions that wrack the American mainstream, distinct enough that rural and suburban Ontario elected Doug Ford mainly as a snub to the elitism they feel every time they come downtown.

Discouraging — or, as seems inevitable, eventually banning — people from driving into the downtown core will only exacerbate such alienation. And positing public transportation — as so many academic papers do — as an alternative to suburbanite travel needs just tells me none of these “experts” have ever actually spoken to anyone from Newmarket or Kelowna. Automobiles may have become anathema to the urban lifestyle  — Wikipedia devotes an entire Effect of the Car on Societies entry to its hatred of the car — but they are still as much at the core of suburban/rural freedom as they were 30, or even 50, years ago. Given a choice between visiting Burrard or Queen Street by public transport or staying home, most non-inner-city dwellers will simply choose to avoid anyplace where they feel increasingly unwanted.

Article content

The issue is not that congestion taxes won’t work, but that the cure may turn out to be worse than the disease

As for all the glib downtown liberals already thinking “good riddance,” you’re proving my point. The American disease — which threatens to bring down the greatest empire of the modern world where war, economic blight, and pestilence couldn’t — is the result of just such condescension. Nothing says “elitism” more than never wanting to be in an environment where anyone acts — or, more importantly, thinks — differently than you and your cohort.

Lorraine cites Paris — which hopes to ban all cars from four of its arrondissements as early as 2022 — as a positive example of a city doing whatever it takes to curb emissions. But I have to ask: Does Mayor Anne Hidalgo really think a ban on inner-city driving is a smart solution in a country that was shut down but three years ago because a tax curbed the gilets jaunes’ right to go where they wanted to, when they wanted to? Seriously?

Article content

And imagine the consequences of inner-city driving bans 30 years hence; an entire generation of suburbanites that hardly ever — maybe even never — venture into the inner city. Hollywood has made serious bank on portraying just such a dystopian future, though typically the dichotomy involves the elites floating in a city in the sky lording over the crumbling ruins left to the lesser.

Is that a slippery slope a little too neo-con for you? Well, then, here’s a fact that is simply non-cancellable. Whether public-transport-minded progressives and rabid car-hating environmentalists like it or not, the automobile is the greatest freedom machine ever invented, and is solely responsible for the mobility that has brought disparate people, thoughts, and conversations together, doubly so here in North America with its vast horizons. For many suburbanites and those in small communities, it remains so today, and it is likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

Article content

So, to the smug inner-city dwellers thinking that such congestion taxes are just the thing to curb the issues central to their concerns, understand this: Yes, forcing people out of their cars and into public transportation will reduce emissions. And, yes, it will also still allow you to keep in contact with family, colleagues, and all your like-minded friends.

But such dramatic change could well alienate you from everyone whose worldview, community concerns, and political leanings differ from your own. I’d suggest a quick look due south for a screenshot of the effects such polarization inevitably engenders.