Dear Editor:
There is already a small toll on every bridge and road. It's called taxes. With the new public-private partnership bridges, we pay both tax and tolls.
At 2.7-million vehicles crossing the Port Mann Bridge in the month since tolls began, $3.50 each yields $9.5 million. Users would pay at least $120 million a year in tolls.
Staff, paper and postage to mail nine million invoices a month; cameras, computers, administration systems: tolls are paying for this private corporation's infrastructure, to take over our public transportation systems.
The Golden Ears public-private partnership likewise.
River crossings are essential services, so the corporation is printing money with their captive market.
In 50 years, users will put out billions - much more than if government had built the bridges as public infrastructure -recognizing that we are all interdependent.
Let's keep the "old" bridge and give public-private partnership some competition.
Keep all old bridges and the tunnel; maintain them, add to our infrastructure, not demolish usable systems. At the rate we're importing people, we already need them all.
The Liberal government's core agenda - privatizing public infrastructure, hard and soft (B.C. Ferries, B.C. Hydro, TransLink, etc.) to their global corporate friends - has brought us near bankruptcy; has reduced our power to govern ourselves in our interest.
These disasters don't show up in their budget.
Hilda Bechler, via email
